Modafinil is a medication commonly prescribed to treat narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and shift work disorder (SWSD) as well as to enhance cognition. It is also widely used off-label as a smart herb.
Several studies have shown that modafinil improves cognitive function in people not suffering from narcolepsy or other sleep disorders. A new systematic review published in European Neuropsychopharmacology has shed more light on the smart pill cognitive enhancement effects and found that they are significant.
Increased Attention
The FDA has approved the wake-promoting medication Buy Modvigil Online for the treatment of narcolepsy, shift-work disorder, and sleep apnea-related drowsiness.
However, it has been reported to have some adverse side effects, including drowsiness, dizziness, and trouble thinking or controlling movements. These may be mild or severe depending on your individual situation and the dose of medicine you take.
Taking Modafinil can also cause you to become dependent on the smart pill. That’s why it’s important to use other forms of birth control while you’re taking it and for a month afterward.
This new study, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, showed that subjects who were treated with Modafinil scored higher on a one-touch Stockings of Cambridge spatial planning task than those who received a placebo. They also made fewer choices to correct the wrong answer than did those on the placebo.
Increased Memory
Modafinil is a smart pill originally used to treat narcolepsy that can also enhance memory and other cognitive functions. It isn’t entirely clear how it works, but experts believe that it improves attention, learning, and other cognitive abilities.
But the effects of modafinil are not uniform, and they vary according to the person’s health. For example, a recent study of modafinil’s effects on healthy people found that it can boost energy but did not improve performance on tasks that require concentration.
In addition, modafinil may be unsafe for people with dementia, as it can increase the risk of side effects such as agitation and anxiety. Anna Burke, M.D., a geriatric psychiatrist at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix told Psychiatric News.
Researchers at the University of Oxford recently reviewed 24 studies published between 1990 and 2014 that tested how modafinil affected cognition. They found that the methods used to test the smart pill strongly affected its effects.
Increased Creativity
If you’ve come up with an idea or solution and want to see it through, modafinil can help you do that. This is because it can make you feel more energized and focus on it for longer.
Several studies have found that Modafinil increases attention, learning and memory, and even executive function. It is thought to do this by boosting the activity of dopamine and norepinephrine.
However, one study also showed that Modafinil reduced divergent thinking. This is important to note because it could be a negative effect of the smart pill on creativity.
A new systematic review analyzed 24 studies that looked at the effects of modafinil on cognition and determined that it boosts cognitive functions such as planning and decision-making, flexibility, learning and memory, and creativity. The review also notes that the smart pill does not negatively affect mood.
Increased Flexibility
Several studies in both rodents and humans have shown that modafinil increases cognitive performance, especially working memory, recognition memory, sustained attention, and other tasks that depend on mental control. This effect may be enhanced by a sustained dosing regimen.
For example, one study of healthy adults undergoing simulated night-shift work found that a 4-day dose of modafinil 200 mg reduced errors (compared to placebo) on the WCST and Hayling Sentence Completion Test, which require cognitive control and involved activation of dorsolateral PFC (Nathaniel-James et al, 2002) and anterior cingulate cortex measured by fMRI.
Another double-blind, placebo-controlled study of medication-free narcolepsy patients found that a 3-week dose of modafinil 200 mg/day improved performance on a simple arithmetic task (Pauli Test) and significantly decreased the and d power (LORETA), both localized to the frontal and anterior cingulate cortices. However, there was no improvement in the task of visual discrimination learning.
