I tried Silicon Valley’s favorite ‘brain-enhancing’ drugs

I tried Silicon Valley’s favorite ‘brain-enhancing’ drugs(fusion.net)

12 points by geoffwoo 11 years ago | 4 comments

aaardvark 11 years ago |

Garbage article. There are no "brain enhancers", only stimulants, both commonly used (coffee, tea etc) and pharmaceutical (amphetamines et al). Look up Bacopa on examine.com, specifically the studies on Memory Enhancement. For the ones with participants in the target (aka non-old) group of 18-45, it's about 50-50. After supplementing over several months.

raven105x 11 years ago | |

> There are no "brain enhancers"

I wholeheartedly agree with you that the article is indeed one big garbage advertisement, alas there is a large number of non-stimulatory substances which reliably enhance cognition in measures that can be readily quantified and telling people otherwise is spreading ignorance and misinformation.

First of all, virtually all Adaptogens are non-stimulant cognition enhancers, of which these are the most notable:

Bacopa - http://examine.com/supplements/Bacopa+monnieri/ Rhodiola - http://examine.com/supplements/Rhodiola+Rosea/

Second, there are the profound alas very situational cognition enhancers, such as:

Piracetam & Noopept in stroke victims, former Alcoholics (quite common) and as you pointed out the elderly. NSI-189 & PRL-8-53 for poverty-stricken adults who grew up sleep deprived and/or malnutritioned (common).

Then there are substances widely reported as helpful in healthy subjects, alas with insufficient studies:

Tianeptine, Centro & CDP/GPC Cholines, Sulbutiamine ...hell even Creatine is a slight cognitive enhancer.

Now - to your point: are any of these life changing? In damaged individuals, perhaps. Alas like you said in healthy young adults, many of these substances will produce either mild improvements or no improvements at all save for extreme neurological outliers.

But to claim that Stimulants are the only cognitive enhancers especially when you seem to've done some basic research... why?

aaardvark 11 years ago | | |

>But to claim that Stimulants are the only cognitive enhancers especially when you seem to've done some basic research... why?

>Now - to your point: are any of these life changing? In damaged individuals, perhaps. Alas like you said in healthy young adults, many of these substances will produce either mild improvements or no improvements at all save for extreme neurological outliers.

I'm only addressing perceptible cognitive enhancement with regards to otherwise healthy + young individuals (the target demo of the products listed in the article). I've gone through every study on examine.com for all the usual suspects (racetams, choline, rhodiola, bacopa etc) and have even tried them all personally for ~6 months. I feel pretty confident in saying that they are worthless for people in that demo.

CyberDildonics 11 years ago |

One giant advertisement.