Modafinil, which is prescribe for sleep disorders such as narcolepsy, has been reporte to enhance cognitive performance. It is the first well-validated pharmaceutical nootropic that enhances cognition in healthy people without requiring sleep deprivation.
It is widely use among shift workers, students, and those in high-stress jobs for its wakefulness and memory-enhancing properties.
Boosts Focus
Modafinil is primarily prescrib to treat narcolepsy and is also use off-label as a cognitive enhancer. Although studies on sleep-deprive participants have show that Modafinil significantly improves attention and cognitive control, less research has been conducte on the drug’s effect on cognition in people who are not sleep deprive.
Researchers investigated the effects of two doses of Modafinil Australia Online (200 and 400 mg) on domain-specific enhancement in healthy volunteers using tasks that measured planning, decision-making, flexibility, and learning. The results showed that Modafinil boosted performance in all these areas, but the specific benefits were task-dependent.
For example, Modafinil improved attention in the d prime task by increasing target detection but did not change overall responsivity as measured by reaction times. However, it did increase the number of problems solved in a limited number of moves in the Group Embedded Figures task.
The researchers concluded that these improvements were largely due to the drug’s stimulant properties, as Modafinil enhanced performance on tasks that required mental alertness and concentration. These findings suggest that Modafinil can be regard as the first well-validat pharmaceutical nootropic. This is important because putative cognitive enhancers such as cocaine and amphetamines have not been clinically proven to boost cognition in normal people and can lead to a range of demonstrable side effects, including addiction.
It is not clear whether the drug would be effective for longer-term use, and how it might affect a person’s health and mood, but the study does raise some interesting ethical issues. It could be argue that, as the drug is widely available and widely use for non-medical purposes, it should be regulat in the same way as other drugs that improve attention and performance.
Increases Memory
While the FDA has approv modafinil for treating excessive sleepiness, it is also widely use off-prescription for cognitive enhancement. Modafinil has been show to improve performance on a variety of psychometric tests in healthy non-sleep deprivation volunteers, but until recently there was little consensus about the extent and nature of these effects.
One double-blind placebo-controll study found that a 4-day regimen of 200 mg modafinil ( Modalert Pills ) improv performance on the PAL (12 shapes) test relative to placebo and that these improvements were associat with increased activity in left BA 46 (Farrow et al, 2006). Another study showe that a single dose of modafinil improves performances on several tasks, including divide attention and immediate memory, and that these improvements are associate with increases in right frontal cortex activity (Nathaniel-James and Frith, 2002; Walsh et al, 2004).
In an experiment using the CPT-IP and letter-number span, a moderate dose of modafinil significantly enhanced performance compared to a placebo on these measures. These improvements were not associat with any changes in subjective arousal, measure by visual analog ratings or cardiovascular measures. This suggests that the modafinil effects on cognition were not driven by a general increase in motivation, but rather by specific increases in certain aspects of task-related arousal that directly impact cognition.
Modafinil is the first well-validated pharmaceutical nootropic that enhances cognition in the absence of sleep deprivation. This is an important finding because it shifts the ethical discussion to what might be regard as a genuinely beneficial cognitive enhancer, whereas previous discussions have been focus on extravagant claims before it was clear that such drugs even had any effect at all.
Reduces Fatigue
Researchers have found that Modawake 200 reduces fatigue in several clinical trials and can improve performance on tasks that require multiple cognitive functions. For example, modafinil reduced chess players’ move time and increased their success rate on a task that required both memory and executive function.
It has also been show to increase motivation and decrease perceived fatigue in individuals performing complex cognitive tasks such as planning, a decision-making test, and a creative task. The positive effects of modafinil on task performance may be due to its ability to enhance the experience of the tasks themselves. This is similar to the euphoric feelings experienced by people engaging in pleasurable activities such as sex, physical activity, and social interactions.
However, the results from these studies were not design to look at the long term use of Modafinil. Further research is need to examine the effect of Modafinil on long-term cognitive and performance outcomes, as well as its safety in the longer term.
In addition to reducing fatigue, Modafinil has been show to improve performance in patients with neurological conditions such as MS, PD, and stroke. These studies were randomiz controlle trials and met a set of quality criteria regarding patient selection, outcome measurements, and follow-up. They found that patients taking Modafinil had lower ESS scores than those on placebo and that these improvements were mediated by increas dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. This increase in dopamine has been link to decreased rsFC in the default mode network.
Increases Energy
This study demonstrated that Modafinil significantly enhances attention in humans performing the 5C-CPT task at doses that do not influence WCST performance or increase activity on the human behavioral pattern monitor (BPM).
The attention improvement arose from a trend for modafinil to improve target detection and was not due to increased overall responsiveness, as evidenced by no change in reaction times. In contrast, the highest doses of modafinil in mice produced hyperactivity on the BPM but only at a level that also significantly improved performance on WCST.
These data indicate that modafinil produces domain-specific enhancement of attention in humans that is not drive by hyperarousal and suggests that a key mechanism in the cognitive enhancing effects of this drug is its ability to increase motivation.
The heightened motivation observed in this study relates to the augmentation of task-relevant incentive values, i.e., the reward value of completing the tasks. Subjects performed better on the tasks under modafinil and found them more pleasurable to complete than placebo subjects did. This finding lends empirical validity to anecdotal reports of lifestyle use of modafinil as a tool to increase concentration and enhance work performance.
This is the first study to show that a pharmaceutical nootropic can improve cognition in healthy individuals without the need for sleep deprivation and thus is an important advance over previous attempts to improve performance with non-pharmacological stimulants such as caffeine or nicotine. However, it is important to stress that this study did not examine the long-term effects of Modafinil or its effect on a person’s physical and mental health. Larger studies investigating these issues are urgently require.
