Drugs commonly taken to improve cognition only boost short-term focus – at high cost

“People who are taking these drugs to perform better in school or at work may feel as though they are doing better, but our data don’t support this feeling,” says study co-author Sara Mednick, UCI associate professor of cognitive sciences and director of the campus’s Sleep and Cognition Lab. School of Social Sciences / UCI Irvine, Calif., Aug. 8, 2019 –The use of prescription stimulants by those without medically diagnosed conditions marks a growing trend among young adults – particularly college students seeking a brain boost. But according to a study led by the University of California, Irvine, taking a nonprescribed psychostimulant may slightly improve a person’s short-term focus but impede sleep and mental functions that rely on it – such as working memory. “Healthy individuals who use psychostimulants for cognitive enhancement may incur unintended costs to cognitive processes that depend on good sleep,” said lead author Lauren Whitehurst, a former graduate student in UCI’s Sleep and Cognition Lab who’s now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. “Our research shows that while psychostimulants may mildly curb natural attentional deterioration across the day, their use also disturbs sleep and post-sleep executive function.” The study, conducted in the Sleep and Cognition Lab, involved 43 people between 18 and 35 years old. Before receiving any medication, they completed baseline working memory and attention tasks. For the latter, participants had to track several moving circles on a screen for a short period of time. For working memory, they were asked to remember and manipulate a set of letters while performing simple math equations and then after a short retention interval, recall all the letters. In one subsequent 9 a.m. lab visit, subjects were given an inactive placebo pill; in another, they got 20 milligrams of dextroamphetamine – a drug […]

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