Test and Studying skills?

Aricept for Improved cognitive skills in a normal healthy person

• I?m planning on taking an exam for graduate school admission and I would like to know if taking Aricept will improve my cognitive skills for studying and during the actual test. Is there a better pill for this? I?m normal healthy 30 year old male.

• Answer:

  There has been quite a boom in the development of "smart drugs" or "cognitive enhancers." Here is an overview of Aricept and other substances that may help to boost intelligence or improve memory skills. Some of these, such as Aricept, require a prescription; others, such as Vinpocetine, are available over-the-counter from some health food stores and Internet merchants who sell "supplements"; still others, like caffeine and nicotine, are so widely available that we tend not to think of them as drugs. Please keep in mind that Google Answers is not a source of authoritative medical advice; the material I have gathered is for informational purposes only, and should not be viewed as a medical recommendation. Not all the sources linked below are of equal scientific repute. Cognitive enhancement is a field in which anecdotal claims are quite common. Taking a metaphorical "grain of salt" in evaluating such claims is perhaps the ultimate in cognitive enhancement. ====================================================================== ARICEPT (DONEPEZIL HYDROCHLORIDE) ====================================================================== "The first hint that Alzheimer's drugs might have other memory benefits comes from the work of Dr. Jerome Yesavage of Stanford University and the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System in California. Yesavage gave Aricept, approved for mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, to healthy middle-aged airplane pilots to test whether it could boost their performance. In the study, 18 pilots learned a complex series of instructions during seven sessions on a flight simulator. Then half took Aricept, and they performed better, suggesting that the memory drug played a role. The study was published in the journal of the American Academy of Neurology." Insufficient Memory Can a pill boost your brain?s ability to hold information? http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/dll/memory_drugs_newsday.html "Among the sparse findings about the effects of these drugs on healthy individuals, at least one study suggests that a long-standing dementia treatment improves cognitive functioning in normal people. In July 2002 Jerome A. Yesavage of Stanford University, Peter J. Whitehouse of Case Western Reserve University and their colleagues published a study in Neurology assessing the impact of donepezil on the performance of pilots... A month after their initial training, the pilots on donepezil performed significantly better than the control group, with especially enhanced performance on the landing approach and in handling emergencies. Yesavage, who hopes to conduct an expanded study sometime soon, noted in the Neurology article that if cognitive enhancement becomes possible in intellectually intact individuals, significant legal, regulatory, and ethical questions will emerge." Nootropics: The Quest for A Smart Pill http://nootropics.com/smartdrugs/smartpills.html "Yesavage JA, Mumenthaler MS, Taylor JL, Friedman L, O'Hara R, Sheikh J, Tinklenberg J, Whitehouse PJ. Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305-5550, USA. [email protected] We report a randomized, double-blind, parallel group, placebo-controlled study to test the effects of the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, donepezil (5 mg/d for 30 days), on aircraft pilot performance in 18 licensed pilots with mean age of 52 years. After 30 days of treatment, the donepezil group showed greater ability to retain the capacity to perform a set of complex simulator tasks than the placebo group, p < 0.05. Donepezil appears to have beneficial effects on retention of training on complex aviation tasks in nondemented older adults." Donepezil and flight simulator performance: effects on retention of complex skills. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12105320 "Mumenthaler MS, Yesavage JA, Taylor JL, O'Hara R, Friedman L, Lee H, Kraemer HC. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. [email protected] The cholinergic system plays a major role in cognitive abilities that are essential to piloting an aircraft: attention, learning, and memory. In previous studies, drugs that enhance the cholinergic system through different pharmacologic mechanisms have shown beneficial effects on cognition; but dissimilar cognitive measures were used and samples were not comparable. A comparison within the same cognitive tasks, within comparable samples appears desirable. Toward this aim, we compared effect sizes (ES) of performance-enhancing doses of nicotine (a nicotinic receptor agonist) and donepezil (an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor) as found in our prior work on pilot performance. We also compared cholinergic ES to those of performance-impairing doses of alcohol. In three randomized, placebo-controlled trials, we assessed the flight performance of aircraft pilots in a Frasca 141 simulator, testing I: the acute effects of nicotine gum 2 mg; II: the effects of administration of 5 mg donepezil/day for 30 days; and III: the acute and 8 h-carryover effects of alcohol after a target peak BAC of 0.10%. We calculated the ES of nicotine, donepezil, and alcohol on a flight summary score and on four flight component scores. Compared to placebo, nicotine and donepezil significantly improved, while alcohol significantly impaired overall flight performance: ES (nicotine)=0.80; ES (donepezil)=1.02; ES (alcohol acute)=-3.66; ES (alcohol 8 h)=-0.82. Both cholinergic drugs showed the largest effects on flight tasks requiring sustained visual attention. Although the two tested cholinergic drugs have different pharmacologic mechanisms, their effects on flight performance were similar in kind and size. The beneficial effects of the cholinergic drugs on overall flight performance were large and the absolute (ie nondirectional) sizes were about one-fourth of the absolute ES of acute alcohol intoxication and roughly the same as the absolute 8 h-carryover ES of alcohol." Psychoactive drugs and pilot performance: a comparison of nicotine, donepezil, and alcohol effects. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12784106 ====================================================================== OTHER POSSIBLE 'COGNITIVE ENHANCERS' ====================================================================== Adrafinil "Adrafinil (Olmifon) Enhances vigilance, alertness, memory and creativity. Adrafinil is totally unlike any other mental stimulant. Increases sensitivity to external stimulation and the 'quality' of presence without interfering with sleep patterns." Biorica http://www.biorica.info/English/E-Anti-Aging/E-Smart%20Drugs.htm ====================================================================== Aniracetam "Aniracetam is a member of the nootropic class of drugs, which have possible cognition enhancing effects." Biopsychiatry http://www.biopsychiatry.com/aniracetamcog.htm ====================================================================== Caffeine "In the August 1999 issue of Physiology and Behavior, for instance, English researchers reported that volunteers who drank caffeinated coffee in the morning performed better than nondrinkers on tests that involved learning new information. A study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine in August 1999 found that attention, psychomotor skills, and long-term memory all improved during the few hours after volunteers drank caffeinated beverages. Why? Caffeine keeps us alert not by speeding us up but by keeping us from slowing down, according to Michael Bonnet, PhD, professor of neurology at Wright State University in Ohio. Each time brain cells fire, they produce a squirt of a chemical that serves as an 'off' switch that keeps neural activity in check. Caffeine, in effect, blocks the chemical -- jamming the switch so that it can't be turned down. Caffeine may also boost levels of brain-cell calcium, a mineral we know is important in memory. In experiments reported in the October 1999 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an Israeli researcher observed a calcium increase in brain cells exposed to caffeine." Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Neurology: Attention, long-term memory and caffeine http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/forum_2/ADHDF/12.3.999.34AMAttentionlon.html ====================================================================== Centrophenoxine (Lucidril) Centrophenoxine is an intelligence booster and also an effective anti-aging therapy. It has been shown to cause improvements in various aspects of memory function and a 30% increase in lifespan of laboratory animals." Hoboes: New Drugs That Make You Smart http://www.hoboes.com/pub/Prohibition/Drug%20Information/Smart%20Drugs/Drugs%20That%20Make%20You%20Smart ====================================================================== Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) "According to many reports, life span is lengthened, aging is slowed, and quality of life is improved. Cognitive brain function improves and intelligence increases. DHEA increases the number of neurons (brain cells) and expands the network of neural connections." AIE Pharmaceuticals http://www.atihealthnet.com/pages/dhea.html ====================================================================== Dimethylaminoethanol (DMAE) "DMAE is the abbreviation for Dimethylaminoethanol. It is a precursor of neural transmitters and it gets rid of old age pigments deposited in brain cells. It improves nerve impulse transmission in the brain and the function of brain cells when cleared of the brown pigment, Lipofuchsin, that collects with old age." Biorica http://www.biorica.info/English/E-Anti-Aging/E-Smart%20Drugs.htm ====================================================================== Ginkgo biloba "A recent study conducted at the Brain Sciences Institute(BSI) at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne found that Ginkgo biloba significantly increases and improves intelligence, concentration, memory, can help sexual function and may prevent Alzheimer?s and dementia. Dr Con Stough, Associate Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience at BSI conducted the double-blind placebo controlled trial on 55 people aged between 18 - 40 years for 30 days. The group was randomly divided into two groups, one group receiving Blackmores product GinkgoforteTM and the other receiving a placebo. Psychological tests were used to assess each participants intelligence, concentration, attention, memory, problem solving, speed of visual information processing and social intelligence before and after taking the tablets... This is the first study on Ginkgo biloba?s effect on memory and information processing in young healthy people... participants with more average IQ?s or intelligences improved significantly more than those with higher IQ?s on tests of attention and problem solving." Blackmore's: Ginkgo Biloba Improves Memory http://www.blackmores.com.au/news/news_detail.asp?art=294 "Relatively few studies of cognitively normal adults are available. An early report found that a 600 mg dose of Ginkgo biloba extract improved memory scanning performance in eight females (Hindmarch,1986), although the same dose level in another study obtained no psychomotor, perceptual, memory or choice response time effects in 12 female adults (Warot et al., 1991). A more encouraging set of results using computerized methods with 64 healthyvolunteers found appreciable dose-related improvement with Ginkgo biloba at 320 mg levels." Human Psychopharmacology: Cognitive effects of a Ginkgo bilobalvinpocetine compound in normal adults http://p300.scripps.edu/papers/38.pdf ====================================================================== Hydergine "Hydergine has found to have a wide variety of cognitive enhancing properties including increasing the blood flow to the brain, increasing oxygen flow to the brain, acting as a free radical scavenger in the brain. Hydergine reduces symptoms of tiredness, and helps with the intake of new material in learning. Hydergine is known to increase intelligence and recall." In Home Health http://www.inhome-health.com/products.htm ====================================================================== Nicotine "Nicotine and other nicotinic agonists have been found to improve performance on attention and memory tasks. Clinical studies using nicotine skin patches have demonstrated the efficacy of nicotine in treating cognitive impairments associated with Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Experimental animal studies have demonstrated the persistence of nicotine-induced working memory improvement with chronic exposure, in addition to the efficacy of a variety of nicotinic agonists. Mechanistic studies have found that alpha7 and alpha4beta2 nicotinic receptors in the hippocampus are critical for nicotinic involvement in cognitive function. Clinical and experimental animal studies provide mutually supporting information for the development of novel nicotinic therapies for cognitive dysfunction." Nootropics: Cognitive effects of nicotine http://nootropics.com/nicotine/ ====================================================================== Oxiracetam "Chemically, oxiracetam is similar to piracetam, though stronger in effect. It is one of the more commonly used smart drugs." Laslett: Smart Drugs http://www.laslett.info/drugs/ ====================================================================== Phenylalanine Phenylalanine is the most common of brain boosting amino acids; it will help one to fight off stress and it may also elevate one's mood and increase alertness." Nootrope: Better Thinking Through Chemistry http://www.nootrope.net/nootropics.html ====================================================================== Piracetam "Piracetam or Nootropil has many different uses. It corrects memory loss, improves concentration, increases mental activity, stabilizes emotional behavior, protects the brain against free radical damage such as from alcohol and drugs and enhances mental deficiency regardless of age." Biorica http://www.biorica.info/English/E-Anti-Aging/E-Smart%20Drugs.htm "Piracetam (aka Avigilen, Cerebroforte, Cerebrospan, Cetam, Dinagen, Encefalux, Encetrop, Euvifor, Gabacet, Genogris, Meo-Puren, Nootron, Nootropil, Normabrain, Norzetam, Novocetam, Pirrozil, Psycoton, Stimucortex and UCB-6215) The most common smart drug out there is probably Piracetam, probably because it's not the most recent, it has a wide variety of uses and is quite inexpensive. It is used to treat several illnesses, like alcoholism, dementia and stroke, but should also improve memory and learning in healthy humans. It is supposed to increase the flow of information between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, thus helping in creative problem solving. It is sold as pills and the effective dose is 2400-4800 mg in three divided doses (Smart Drugs & Nutrients, p. 43), although some sources report significantly smaller dosages ranging from 800 mg to 2400 mg (Brain Boosters, p. 97). It has no know serious side effects, although insomnia, headaches, nausea and stomach disturbances are possible. As with any other smart drug it is the best to try and find out the dose that is good for you while keeping in mind the possible toxicity of the drug (Piracetam has no know toxicity meaning that one probably can't overdose it). Piracetam has a synergistic effect with DMAE, centrophenoxine, choline and Hydergine, which means that the effects of Piracetam are amplified when taken at the same time with these drugs. Piracetam is a prescription only drug in many countries, but is widely available via mail-order." Nootropics: Better Thinking Through Chemistry http://www.nootrope.net/nootropics.html ====================================================================== Pramiracetam "Chemically related to piracetam, and has a similar effect in improving the operations of certain brain neurotransmitters involed in mind function. Pramiracetam is a more potent version of piracetam." Z.L. Damen: Drug Descriptions http://zldamen.com/drugdescriptions/smartdrugs/ ====================================================================== Vinpocetine "Some of the nootropic drugs being tested now on humans include vinpocetine (being developed by Ayerst Laboratories), which speeds up learning, improves memory and recall and seems to block the action of substances that disrupt memory; aniracetam (Hoffman-La Roche), which appears to be about ten times more potent in improving and protecting memory than piracetam, pramiracetam (Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis), which seems to improve learning and memory by enhancing the firing of neurons in the hippocampus (a key to the formation of long-term memories), and oxiracetam (Ciba-Geigy), apparently two to three times as powerful as piracetam." Dr. Steven Mizrach - Home Page: "SMART DRUGS" FAQ http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/nootropics.html "Over 50 clinical studies involving over 1,300 people conducted around the world demonstrate the multiple benefits of Vinpocetine supplementation. Key benefits include: Memory Enhancement Cognitive Performance Cerebral Circulation Mental Acuity and Awareness Vinpocetine enhances memory by improving cerebral circulation, promoting oxygen utilization and optimizing energy transport. Vinpocetine increases energy use and improves the utilization of oxygen and glucose leading to healthy circulation in the brain. Glucose, the only energy source for the brain, is vital to optimal brain function. Clinical studies show that Vinpocetine increases mental acuity and awareness, thereby enhancing overall cognitive performance." US Food & Drug Administration: Phamavite http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/00/jun00/060200/let4881.pdf ====================================================================== Regarding the matter of which of the smart drugs are most effective, the jury's still out on that. A number of medical studies using cognitive enhancers have been conducted on patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, but tests on healthy patients are few and far between, and most of the evidence is anecdotal. Here's a bit of advice for those who want to try smart drugs: "Which of the smart drugs is best to start with? -- MH Answer: This is a question we're frequently asked. The answer is, 'it depends.' Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet smart drug that works well for everyone. Nor is there any known way to test in advance who will respond best to which smart drug. Therefore, the use of smart drugs remains empirical, and the choice of which drug/substance to start with is a very individualized one. For example, many users of cognitive enhancing substances prefer to use natural (non-drug) substances. For them, the best substances to start with are 1) over-the-counter nutrients from health food stores, like dimethylaminoethanol (DMAE), Gingko biloba, or phenylalanine, or 2) preprepared combination products containing neurotransmitter precursors like choline, tyrosine, phenylalanine, pyroglutamate, etc. For those that have a cooperating knowledgeable physician, Hydergine and vasopressin may be tried initially. For those who live close to the Mexican border, or who can order from overseas pharmacies, well-tested drugs that can be highly recommended for first-time include piracetam and deprenyl. -- WD Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute http://www.ceri.com/q-3.htm ====================================================================== Search terms: aricept OR donepezil smart drug(s) nootropic(s) supplement(s) cognitive enhancer(s) boost intelligence increase intelligence enhance intelligence ====================================================================== I hope this is helpful. If anything I've said is unclear, or if a link doesn't work for you, please request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further assistance before you rate my answer. Best regards, pinkfreud