If you’re taking prescription drugs to get ahead on your next test, chances are you’ll fail — these so-called “smart” drugs may actually impair brain function, a new study suggests.
Smart drugs, most commonly prescribed for ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) to improve focus and concentration, are largely known under Ritalin, Provigil, and Adderall.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom asked participants to have no ADHD problems after taking medication
The team found individuals were less accurate and efficient with the results.
The findings come at a time when the US is facing a historic shortage of Adderall, one of the most common drugs prescribed for ADHD, and diagnoses are at an all-time high.
A study published in the journal Science Advances found that people taking “smart” drugs who don’t have ADHD performed worse while taking them than they did while on the placebo
The study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, consisted of four double-blind, randomized trials spaced one week apart.
Researchers studied 40 healthy participants who took a placebo or one of three popular smart drugs: methylphenidate (Ritalin), modafinil (Provigil), and dextroamphetamine (Adderall). There were 17 men and 23 women.
The participants were asked to perform an exercise known as the Knapsack Optimization Problem or ‘Knapsack Task’. The group received a virtual backpack and a set of items with different weights and values. They had to figure out how best to fit the items and how to make the most of the space.
The group taking the smart drugs experienced small reductions in accuracy and efficiency compared to their results when they took no drugs. They also took much more time and effort to complete the exercise.
When under the effects of Ritalin, the participants took about 50 percent longer to complete the task than when they took the placebo.
Those who performed well on the placebo also tended to show a more significant drop in performance and productivity after taking a smart drug. Those who were in the top 25 percent on the placebo often found themselves in the bottom 25 percent after taking Ritalin, for example.
And those who performed poorly on the placebo say only minor improvements after taking one of the drugs.
“Our results suggest that these drugs don’t actually make you ‘smarter’,” Peter Bossaerts, one of the study’s authors and professor of neuroeconomics at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. press release.
“Because of the dopamine that the drugs induce, we expected increased motivation, and they motivate someone to try harder. However, we found that this effort induced more erratic thinking — in ways we could make accurate because the knapsack task had been studied extensively in computer science.”
“Performance generally didn’t improve, so questions remain about how the drugs affect people’s minds and their decision-making.”
Adderall prescriptions have steadily increased over the past 12 years. The numbers include prescriptions for both Adderall, brand and generic, in the US
Prescriptions for Adderall surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2020, just before the virus broke out across America, the drug made up 1.1% of drugs. By September 2022, the figure had more than doubled to 2.31% of all scripts written
Smart drugs are usually prescribed to people with ADHD, one of the most common conditions that affect a child’s neurological development. It is generally diagnosed in childhood, but in recent years the number of diagnoses in adults has increased.
Neuroscientists have not found a cause for ADHD, although genetics are believed to play a major role.
The primary symptoms of ADHD, which typically manifest before age 12, are inattention and hyperactive-impulsive behavior. Among other things, people with ADHD may be constantly nervous, unable to concentrate on a task, talk excessively, interrupt others, and be easily distracted.
Stimulants are the most commonly used medications for ADHD because they increase levels of dopamine, a neurochemical key to concentration and sustained focus by slowing how much of it is reabsorbed back into the neuron that produced it in the first place.
By slowing down the reuptake of dopamine, the neurotransmitter has more time to travel from neuron to neuron, relaying information and eventually binding to a receptor, allowing messages to be sent and received more effectively in the brain.
This improves communication in parts of the brain that produce dopamine and norepinephrine, a chemical that helps you stay awake, pay attention, and think clearly.
ADHD medications are generally very effective and, in many cases, are critical to people’s academic and social success and development. Between 70 and 80 percent of patients taking ADHD medications experience fewer or milder symptoms.
These findings come at a time when Adderall prescriptions are skyrocketing in the US as more and more people are diagnosed with ADHD.
The percentage of women in their 20s who filled prescriptions for ADHD medications such as Adderall rose nearly 20 percent between 2020 and 2021, while that rate among adult men ages 30 to 39 rose nearly 15 percent.
About 10 percent of teen boys used ADHD medication in 2020 and 2021, though that percentage actually fell by about two percent.
Earlier this year, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) expressed concern that “aggressive marketing practices” by telehealth companies may contribute to overprescription of ADHD medications.
About a month after the DEA raised its concerns, the Biden administration proposed stricter rules for online prescriptions for ADHD medications and the opioid addiction treatment buprenorphine.
Under the new rules, patients must first meet in person with a prescriber or be referred by a doctor they have met in person.
In 1990, fewer than 950,000 children ages 5 to 18 were diagnosed with ADHD. By 2016, that figure had exploded to more than six million. And with that increase in diagnoses came an increase in prescriptions for drugs, mainly stimulants, to treat the symptoms.
Of those six million children with an ADHD diagnosis, more than 3.7 million are being treated in the form of medication. Compare that to 1990, when about 600,000 children were taking ADHD medication.
Adderall in particular has also been in short supply in the US since October due to supply disruptions and this surge in prescriptions, as well as people using it who don’t need it.
“Our research shows that drugs that are expected to improve patients’ cognitive performance may actually cause healthy users to work harder while producing lower quality work over a longer period of time,” wrote Elizabeth Bowman, a researcher at the Center for Brain. , Mind, and Markets at the University of Melbourne, the press release said.