Modafinil is most widely known as a so-called “smart drug”, and people use it “off the radar” to boost their cognitive abilities, especially their concentration on tasks and their alertness levels. This has made it particularly popular among the student populace during their exam seasons, as it helps the combat sleep deprivation during bouts of intense studying. If you would like to learn a little more about how lack of sleep affects your mental performance levels, you can check out this informative web page.
Most of the previously done research into the effects of modafinil has been conducted on participants who were sleep-deprived, and it has been shown that modafinil indeed boosts the alertness and focus of these individuals.
However, as far as this drug’s overall effects and success goes, there has been barely any work done on how it might affect people who are not sleep-deprived, which is a pretty huge hole in reasoning, supposing that the majority of the users of Modafinil are getting at least some average amount of sleep along the way.
To address this lapse in research, a systematic study has been done under those exact conditions and it has found that Modafinil actually does work even if the people who are taking it are not deprived of natural sleep. This study was a corpus review, done by Dr. Ruairidh Battleday from the University of Oxford and Dr. Anna-Katharine Brem, of both the University of Oxford and the Harvard Medical School. To get a better idea of what a corpus is and what it can be used for, this article is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_corpus
They combed through all of the research papers regarding cognitive enhancement from January 1990 to December 2014 and found twenty-four works which dealt with benefits from taking Modafinil.
Modafinil is credited with having many cognitive benefits, the most prominent of which are creativity, flexibility in thinking, learning n memory abilities, and decision making. However, the level to which Modafinil can boost your performance in any of these mental areas greatly varies between the different tasks.
Looking at it overall, the longer the task lasted, and the more complex it was, the more consistent the drug’s effect was on the brain. In specific types of scenarios, noticeable differences emerged. When it came to the performance of working memory and flexibility in thinking, there was no difference at all. However, it did bring about a noticeable improvement in people’s planning and decision-making process.
As regards any side effects mentioned in the examined corpus, 70% of the users experienced none of them. Modafinil is known for having an effect on the mood of the person taking it, and among the other 30% of them, a few people reported having trouble with insomnia and experiencing nausea, stomach aches, or headaches – however, all of these effects were also present in the placebo group.
The significance of this study lies mostly in the fact that it is the first look at Modafinil’s effect on people who are not sleep deprived since way back in 2008. The best side of this huge time gap is that the types of testing that are used to evaluate the effects that Modafinil has on the mind have significantly changed.
Past studies relied on cognition tests which were originally developed for neurologically impaired persons, meaning that they were extremely simple in structure. Such research conditions did not allow for the proper testing of the full scope of the effects of this drug.
As opposed to that, the more recent approach employed cognitive tests which were of a much more complicated nature. Their greatest benefit was in allowing for a broader perspective because they showed that Modafinil has the most consistent effects with regards to the high brain functions. These are complex processes and they require input from several lower-level, i.e. simpler, mental functions. You can read this excellent article for a more in-depth look at the brain structure and its functions.
Dr. Anna-Katharine Brem has stated that the study can be seen as having two chief conclusions. First off, she claims that the study showed a definitive need for a reliable way of testing both regular and higher-than-regular levels and processes of cognitive functions. However, Dr. Brem has pointed out that there are ethical considerations to make when developing cognitive enhancers research in the future.
Second off, Modafinil does scientifically qualify to be considered a cognitive enhancement drug, especially since its overall side effects are small enough and manageable enough (in the context of a controlled experimental environment).
Modafinil’s effects of cognitive enhancement appear to be entirely independent of its effects on treating sleep disorders (which is the original purpose for which this drug is actually prescribed), according to Professor Guy Goodwin of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, which you can visit at this web page: https://www.ecnp.eu/. To say it in simpler words, Modafinil is the very first real example of a “smart drug”.
It has measurable physical effects within the expected realm of its pharmaceutical ability, instead of the extravagant and unproven promises that many other “brain boosters” tend to make. In the words of Professor Goodwin, this confirmation places great weight on the current ethical debate regarding Modafinil and other similar drugs.
Users of Modafinil have been posing the same debate for years now. Is it safe to use it? Is it legal? Is it ethical? What are the newest developments in this argument? You can get answers to some of those questions at dedicated websites such as https://www.modafinilnow.net.
As it stands now, Modafinil will not be licensed for this “alternative” use, because then it would conflict with the current frameworks of relevant regulatory bodies.
The question, says Goodwin, is how we should classify these pharmaceuticals, and whether they should be encouraged or discouraged for their ability to heighten cognitive performance in humans who have not been previously subject to any kind of cognitive impairment.
