How Can Modafinil Help You Become Smarter?

It improves performance on tests of attention and memory, but it does not significantly improve creativity or motor excitability. It also has few side effects compared to some stimulants, such as cocaine and amphetamine.

Increased Focus

Modafinil 200mg Australia is an approved treatment for narcolepsy, but it’s increasingly being taken without a prescription to improve cognitive function. Studies of its effects in healthy people have yielded mixed results. But some research suggests that the drug can help with a variety of tasks that involve memory, learning and attention.

In one study, participants who took modafinil performed better on tests of digit span and visual recognition than those who took placebo. But the improvements were small. A more recent trial found that a single dose of modafinil increased performance on tasks involving multiple memory domains, and improved decision-making and fluid intelligence. In a study of chess players, modafinil and methylphenidate (another stimulant) both improved performance but not in the same way; whereas modafinil was associated with increased accuracy, methylphenidate improved impulsivity and speed of decision-making.

The findings are promising, says neuropsychologist and review co-author Anna-Katharine Brem, but there is limited research about how long these drugs can benefit people’s performance. And they may not be safe for everyone, as they carry a risk of side effects and addiction. Besides, most people can get mental boosts from caffeine and other naturally occurring chemicals, such as the amino acid L-tyrosine. People have searched for ways to increase brainpower perhaps for all of history, but only modafinil has passed a series of rigorous tests as a cognitive enhancer.

Increased Memory

While Modafinil (Modawake 200 mg) is often used to treat sleep-related conditions like narcolepsy, it's also commonly used off-label as a cognitive enhancer. Many studies on this drug's effectiveness in enhancing cognition have focused on people who are sleep-deprived, but now a new systematic review finds that the drug does indeed improve cognitive function in healthy non-sleep-deprived subjects.

In fact, the drug boosts memory without reducing alertness or affecting reaction time. This is especially significant given the increased prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer's disease in older adults. "If it's possible to help people to think faster and more accurately, with a lower risk for side effects, that's a great thing," says Ruairidh McLennan Battleday, the lead author of the new study published in European Neuropsychopharmacology.

Modafinil appears to enhance the performance of several types of cognitive tasks, including working memory, episodic memory, and processes requiring attention and executive control. It also reduces cholinergic deficits in Alzheimer's disease patients by increasing dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex.

There are some ethical issues surrounding the use of this drug for neuroenhancement. Taking such drugs can create an unfair advantage for some students, who might use it to study more or for last-minute cramming before an exam. But, researchers argue that this doesn't necessarily mean the drug is unjust. "Life is not fair, and there will always be 'haves' and 'have-nots' when it comes to education," says Professor Barbara Sahakian, of the University of Cambridge.

Increased Creativity

Stimulants such as Modafinil (promoted by the brand name Provigil) have been shown to improve performance in a wide range of cognitive tasks in healthy volunteers. However, it is unclear whether they enhance creativity. Studies on creativity and stimulants are limited by small sample sizes, idiosyncratic samples and other methodological problems. Fewer than a half-dozen studies have directly compared creative individuals with and without ADHD who take psychostimulants. Overall, the results have been wildly inconsistent. One study by Mohamed and published in September 2014 in the Journal of Creative Behavior found that although modafinil improved memory, executive functioning and subjective task enjoyment in participants, it did not improve their ability to respond creatively particularly when they were asked to think laterally or outside the box. In fact, the drug impaired creative thinking.

The authors attribute this to the effects of the drug on the brain. It seems to reduce levels of slow neurotransmitters such as glutamate and GABA while increasing fast ones such as catecholamines including dopamine, epinephrine and adrenaline. The results showed that the drug did not improve simple tasks of attention but did improve complex ones such as planning, decision making and fluid intelligence. It is possible that some creative people who have mild ADHD traits use these symptoms to cleverly compensate for what would otherwise be an impairment.

Increased Attention

Modafinil can enhance your ability to concentrate on long and complex tasks, boosting your decision-making and planning skills, according to a study. The drug, also known as Provigil, is a FDA-approved treatment for sleep disorders like narcolepsy and is often used "off-label" by students or people who want to improve their concentration abilities. Unlike ADHD medications such as Adderall, which can be used to boost performance but also has potential for abuse, modafinil is relatively safe and well-tolerated in short doses.

The study, led by Dr Ruairidh Battleday of Oxford and Anna-Katharine Brem of Harvard Medical School, reviewed 24 studies that tested cognitive enhancement with modafinil. The longer and more complicated the task, the more consistently modafinil improved performance. However, it didn't consistently improve simple tasks such as arithmetic or verbal working memory. It did have a small effect on fluid intelligence, but there were mixed findings on creativity.

Studies in rodents show that modafinil increases impulsivity and attention in a dose-dependent manner. It is possible that this improvement in impulsivity and attention would translate to healthy humans, but there are currently no studies that have tested this theory. In the studies that have been conducted, modafinil increased digit span and visual recognition memory, and delayed matching performance. It also enhanced the ability to perform attention-detection tasks without a speed-accuracy tradeoff, and it reduced prepotent responses in frontal lobe areas associated with ascending DA systems.