The Negative Effects Of Cognitive Enhancing Drugs

Cognitive enhancing drugs, or nootropics, are a category of substances that have been purportedly shown to positively impact a user’s cognitive performance in areas such as memory, creativity, motivation, and attention1. Some cognitive enhancing drugs (CED) include common medications such as Adderall, methylphenidate, modafinil with the majority of these substances, either prescribed to patients who have attentional disorders such as ADD and ADHD or memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s due to these positive impacts on cognition. CEDs can additionally be obtained online or in store as over-the-counter supplements2 and are not only restricted to prescription medications. Due to the shown cognitive enhancement these†¦show more content†¦Yet, there are those that believe CED usage is unfair to the students that do not take CEDs, as they do not have added cognitive benefits of their CED using counterparts. There is research that sugges ts the consumption of common CEDs‒ methylphenidate and modafinil‒ does not have a more significant impact on the overall cognitive performance of individuals involved in cognitively demanding tasks than the caffeine in a standard cup of coffee5. It was found that consumption of CEDs methylphenidate (2 x 20 mg), modafinil (2 x 200 mg), or caffeine (2 x 200 mg) during a cognitively demanding task resulted in an increase in cognitive performance when compared to the placebo trials5. There was no significant difference between the increases in cognitive performance between any of the CEDs and, while a wide range of CEDs was not tested, the fact that there was no significant difference between the fair CED, caffeine, and the unfair CEDs, methylphenidate and modafinil, should be some indication as to the overall fairness of these substances. 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