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Nehligh's 2010 review
Nehlig (2010) wrote a systematic review article called "Is caffeine a cognitive enhancer?" (link to publisher, no PDF).
On page S89 to S90 Nehlig reviews the evidence of caffeine as a cognitive enhancer within the context of a history of caffeine consumption:
In
caffeine non-deprived young (20–25 years) and older subjects (50–65
...
10
Your question is very vague, and on a subject where a lot more research needs to be done, so forgive me but my answer is also going to probably be more vague and less definitive than you were hoping for.
Provigil, as far as I can tell is just another brand name of modafinil, which has some very clear advantages when it comes to increasing your concentration ...
8
Haldol (haloperidol) is mainly known for its antipsychotic properties to treat schizophrenia. It's an aged antipsychotic with a lot of side effects. Because of this, haloperidol is nowadays mostly replaced by the atypical antipsychotics, such as clozapine as first-line treatment.
Haloperidol's primary mechanism of action is believed to be related to its ...
7
How much sleep is needed for peak cognitive performance. If some were for >example wake up one morning at 12:30 pm would a sleeping pill help obtain >better sleep required for that performance the next morning at 08:00 am ?
It depends on what pharmacotherapies - per the clinical judgement of their treating physician - one may have consumed. Conceptually, we ...
7
Most of the 'true' hallucinogens are classified as 5HT2A agonists. 5HT2A is a postsynaptic serotonin receptor. Serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the other hand act by increasing serotonin (5HT) levels in the brain, which in turn activates presynaptic 5HT1A receptors. Due to a continuous stimulation of these 5HT1A receptors they become ...
7
Matt has the right direction but it's not the whole answer. As he explains, taking a metabolic precursor to dopamine will increase the amount of dopamine available to the brain. L-Dopa, tyrosine and tyrosine's precursor phenylalanine are possibilities.
Even if taking any of these precursors may raise the amount of dopamine available to the brain, it doesn't ...
7
According to your snippet, increasing dopamine in the brain will decrease latent inhibition.
Dopamine is produced in the body from the chemical L-dopa.
Wikpedia states that dopamine will not cross the blood-brain barrier, so to increase dopamine levels in the brain L-dopa must be used.
Wikipedia also says that there is a herbal extract containing L-dopa ...
6
Resonance methods can be used to measure neurotransmitter levels. Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy can measure the levels of a large number of neurotransmitters. However, this has always been viewed as a fairly static measure of neurotransmitter levels, and so has not been widely used as a measure of neural activity. However, Paul Mullins at Bangor University ...
6
I found an example of a system that researchers are aiming to use in the future for determining the level of neurotransmitter activity in the brain using MRI. You were on the right track with the utility of hemoglobin. The molecule used is somewhat similar. To understand how the probes were generated requires a bit of a biological detour.
There are ...
6
There has been some preliminary research in the 1960's. From "The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders" by Vollenweider and Kometer:
Psycholytic therapy was introduced by Ronald Sandison and applied in
Europe at 18 treatment centres. In psycholytic therapy, low to
moderate doses of LSD (50–100 μg), ...
5
The phenomenon you are referring to is called synesthesia, which can be defined as (Sinke et al., 2012):
Synesthesia (Greek: syn = together; aesthesis = perception) is [...] a crossing of sensory perceptions, where stimulation within one sensory modality/stream leads to an internally generated perceptual experience of another sensory modality/stream.
...
5
Cannabis can cause an acute and short-lasting episode of anxiety, which often resembles a state of panic. When taken in high doses these effects can be intense and turn into attacks of panic and phobia. About 20–30% of users show brief acute anxiety reactions after smoking the drug. These symptoms tend to occur more in drug-naive subjects and in novel or ...
5
One of the very recently published studies linked to in the question, on the relationship between exogenous oxytocin administration and ability to accurately detect deception, instructed participants to self-administer oxytocin by nasal injection before evaluating contestants' decisions in videos of the Friend or Foe game show (Israel, Hart and Winter 2014). ...
answered May 12 '15 at 13:52
Christian Hummeluhr
6,6574 gold badges42 silver badges113 bronze badges
5
It's a bit of an art, currently. Following is one technique I witnessed in a lab that takes electrophysiological recordings of tadpole and rat neurvous sytems.
The lab that I worked with entrains the neuron, recording it's electrical activity (in a series of drug tests) and injects a marker that goes into the neuron (a GFP-like protein that binds to ...
5
"Depression" is a symptom or state of being, one that everyone can experience.
"Major Depressive Disorder," however, is a diagnosable medical disorder for many reasons. The following list is by no means exhaustive:
Major Depressive Disorder runs in families, and a genetic component is well established by family and twin studies.
Anyone who experiences a ...
5
"The United Nations World Drug Report 2013 estimated that approximately 16.5 million people worldwide aged 15 or older used heroin or opium. Of these users, approximately 23% are estimated to develop opioid dependence."
This is from the introduction section of Hser, Y. I., Evans, E., Grella, C., Ling, W., & Anglin, D. (2015). Long-term course of opioid ...
4
You've received a few great comments from our neuroscience-savvy users that indicate ways in which this question can be construed as particularly challenging or maybe even unanswerable. However, I think there's a much more basic and limited understanding of your question that takes into account your self-professed unfamiliarity with neuropharmacology and ...
4
The current understanding, I believe, is that symptomatic psychiatric disorders may or may not be lifelong according to many factors, but that the susceptibility to them probably is lifelong. Some examples. . .
Substance-induced psychosis (which is pretty much what it sounds like) is often though not always temporary.
Certain types and locations of brain ...
4
Question 1: I am unaware of any studies directly addressing the epidemiology of self-medication with cannabis in cases of treatment-resistant depression (it seems like that is what you are asking about). However, there are several lines of therapy that have demonstrated effectiveness in depression beyond the first line antidepressants (CANMAT Depression ...
4
Short answer
Brain zaps are a colloquial term for certain symptoms of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome.
Background
'Brain zaps' are associated with sudden shakes, or vibrations, tremors, jolts, electric shocks, or 'zaps' of the head and/or brain. As SydneyMaples rightfully commented, these are scientifically recognized as symptoms of
...
4
The main cell of the brain is the neuron. The neuron has a semipermeable membrane that under specific circumstances lets potassium through. Another common cell is the glia cell, which only has potassium channels. Potassium, K+, has a positive charge and it can pass across the membrane at specific channels, depending on their state (open/closed). The channels ...
4
As @user30133 pointed out,
Not everyone who feels depressed some time [is] diagnosed with depression. Depression is not simply feeling sad. It has specific diagnosis criteria which you can find in [the] DSM
The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, of which the most recent edition is the 5th edition (DSM-5) which also links to ...
4
IQ in ADHD sufferers indeed increases with the treatment of stimulants, such as methylphenidate (Meyes et al., 1994). This is thought to rely on the attention-narrowing effect of stimulants, i.e., they cause the
easily distracted ADHD child to focus better on the IQ task (Aman, 1996).
It is an interesting question indeed whether such an effect also plays ...
3
In a recent study, brain scans revealed that people under the influence of LSD experience images through information drawn from many parts of their brains, and not just the visual cortex at the back of the head that normally processes visual information. While under influence, regions normally segregated spoke to one another. Further images showed that other ...
3
According to this systemic review (:the most objective kind of evidence come from reviews of studies not primary sources:) 1 in 7 schizophrenia patients met criteria for recovery.
(:Yes, I use smiley faces to demarcate my separate but supporting propositions.:)
Source: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/814844
A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of ...
3
It seems that it is possible.
Norman Sussman, MD (2017) discusses pharmacological and non-pharmacological causes of treatment resistance.
Treatment resistance is addressed in the latest edition of the [Kaplan and Sadock's] Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry as follows: “Some patients fail to respond to repeated trials of medication. No single factor ...
3
One possibility is related to the Two-Factor theory of emotion. The theory describes how emotion is a product of both cognitive and physiological factors. Essentially, the mind tries to determine what emotion it is feeling by analyzing the body. By antagonizing epinephrine, they kind of inhibit the sympathetic nervous system. So, when a person would ...
3
Broadband cortical desynchronization "begins at the cellular level with
excitation of layer 5 pyramidal neurons, and extends to the macroscopic
level with cortical desynchronization and decreased
brain network integrity."
"Stimulation of the 5-HT2A receptor has been shown to
enhance spontaneous EPSPs/EPSCs (excitatory postsynaptic potential /
excitatory ...
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