Posted on 05/16/2005 5:56:47 AM PDT by BILL_C
This pill will make you smarter 14 May 2005 NewScientist.com news service Alison Motluk
HAVING problems performing in the sack? Take Viagra. Got the jitters before that important presentation? Try beta blockers. Need to stay awake to finish that assignment? Pop a Provigil pill.
For those prepared to pay, the growing list of "lifestyle drugs" is shifting the boundaries of what bodies and minds are capable of. Now a small clinical trial of the class of experimental drugs known as ampakines suggests these brain-boosters are destined to blur that line still further by offering improved memory.
The success of the unrelated drug Provigil (also called modafinil) has proved there is a huge market for drugs that can improve mental performance. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved it for treating narcolepsy, sleep apnoea - disrupted breathing during sleep - and the sleepiness caused by shift work. But it is widely taken "off-label" by healthy people to stay awake and alert. Sales of the drug, produced by Cephalon of West Chester, Philadelphia, have more than doubled since 2002, and continue to skyrocket (see Graphic).
Some may feel uncomfortable with the increasing availability of such pharmaceutical pick-me-ups, but others see them as no different from performance aids such as palmtop organisers. "Stimulating your brain with a reminder on a Blackberry doesn't seem that different to me from stimulating your brain with a drug," says Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Ampakines work by boosting the activity of glutamate, a key neurotransmitter that makes it easier to learn and encode memory. They change the rules about what it takes to create a memory, and how strong those memories can be, says Gary Lynch of the University of California at Irvine, who invented the drugs. "We all have the same computer," he says, "but we're running with different voltage levels." Ampakines up that "voltage".
The effects can be dramatic, as Julia Boyle at the University of Surrey, UK, and her colleagues have now shown. They tested an ampakine called CX717 on 16 healthy males aged between 18 and 45. The men were given either 100 milligrams, 300 mg or 1000 mg of the drug, or else a placebo. In repeated trials the volunteers cycled through the treatments so that their performance with different amounts of CX717 could be compared directly.
In each test session, the volunteers started with a full night's sleep and the following morning and evening were given a battery of tests. These assessed memory, attention, alertness, reaction time and problem solving. Then, at 11 pm, the volunteers swallowed their pills and stayed up through the night. At midnight, 1 am, 3 am, 5 am and 9 am, they were re-tested on some of the tasks. And at 4 am, cruelly, they were tucked into bed in a darkened room and told to stay awake. The researchers measured heart rate and brainwave activity to monitor how alert the subjects were and whether they fell asleep.
Even the lowest dose of CX717 significantly improved the sleep-deprived volunteers' wakefulness and cognitive performance. And the more ampakine they took, the more they improved and the longer the effect lasted. Roger Stoll, CEO of Cortex, the Irvine-based company in California that owns the drug, announced the trial results at an investors' conference on 4 May. While specifics were scant, he mentioned that in the dark room, for instance, most volunteers taking placebo dozed off within about 3 minutes, while some ampakine users stayed awake for the entire 15-minute test. And on a test of sustained attention, effects kicked in within an hour of consuming the drug, he revealed. Crucially, the subjects suffered none of the jitteriness that comes with caffeine or amphetamines. "It generates a state of cortical wakefulness without stimulation," says Lynch.
CX717 will have to undergo further clinical trials before gaining approval as a drug. Cortex is considering it as a possible treatment for narcolepsy, jet lag, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Alzheimer's disease.
Meanwhile animal studies hint at even more impressive effects. Research on rhesus macaques, carried out for the US military by Sam Deadwyler at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, found that sleep-deprived monkeys on CX717 actually performed better on reaction time and accuracy tests than when they were well rested. And non-sleep-deprived monkeys given the drug did better still.
As is stated in the article, there are NO known side effects yet known unlike with current drugs.
OK, You stay up and pay attention, when the drug effect wears off do you show signs of CRS?
It reduces your height to 3 feet, turns your skin grey, and your eyes become large, almond shaped, and solid black..
Your nose disappears, and your mouth becomes a small lipless slit.. Your chin disappears, as does all hair on your body.. Your skull doubles in size..
Not that it isn't a good thing... ;o)
when the drug effect wears off do you show signs of CRS?
At a 100 milligram dose, the study found that individuals had increased wakefulness overnight, but that the effect did not extend into recovery sleep the next morning. In the 300 milligram and 1000 milligram doses, the alerting effect of the treatment extended well into the recovery sleep the next day, the company said.
But when they upped the dose, the effect (increased wakefullness) extended into the next day. So from the intial press release, it is does dependent.
It reduces your height to 3 feet, turns your skin grey, and your eyes become large, almond shaped, and solid black..
Your nose disappears, and your mouth becomes a small lipless slit.. Your chin disappears, as does all hair on your body.. Your skull doubles in size..
Not that it isn't a good thing... ;o)
Actually, it modulates the neurons so they are more sensitive to glutamate but NOTHING happens if the neurotransmitter (the signal) is not received.
That's why there are no side effects being seen.....
The drug has a half life of about 9 hours so it's gone by the next day.
Why do the monkeys get all the good drugs!
By the way, being smart is a curse, not a blessing.
Someone's ... (((( Hey Rhoda! )))) ... been slipping that crap in my food. And here I thought it was old age.
Why do the monkeys get all the good drugs!
That work is being done by Dr. Sam Deadwyler at Wake Forest. The results that I have seen are really impressive. Since we saw the first few human results parallel the monkey results, it is expected that if the tests continue to show improvement in humans, AMPAKINES will be huge in CNS type diseases.
An ALZHEIMER's test on humans will start in the next few months.
- It reduces your height to 3 feet, turns your skin grey, and your eyes become large, almond shaped, and solid black..
Your nose disappears, and your mouth becomes a small lipless slit.. Your chin disappears, as does all hair on your body.. Your skull doubles in size..-
You forgot...flatulence.
Frighteningly enough I not only know that song but I've played it for a crowd before.
By the way, being smart is a curse, not a blessing.
Well if you choose, you can not take the pill and remain the way you are.
FROM the article:
Ampakines work by boosting the activity of glutamate, a key neurotransmitter that makes it easier to learn and encode memory. They change the rules about what it takes to create a memory, and how strong those memories can be, says Gary Lynch of the University of California at Irvine, who invented the drugs. "We all have the same computer," he says, "but we're running with different voltage levels." Ampakines up that "voltage".
So, if you choose you can keep the voltage level LOW and vote for a democrat. OR you can up the "voltage" and vote smart, Your choice in the future.
My voltage level is stuck on overload. It's endlessly frustrating to deal with people of merely above-average intelligence.
"And even though
I'm feelin' good,
Something tells me
I'd better
Activate my prayer capsule"
- Genesis
This sound like something that could even make Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy a Republican. Why can't we just introduce it into the Washington D C water supply like we do Fluoride?
Oh, yes. Supper is Ready.
Reminds on a great line in the movie "Broadcast News" where the network president reproaches an overbearing producer:
President- "It must be oh so wonderful to always believe that you're the smartest person in the room!"
Producer: (anguished and sincere) "No, it's terrible."
A similarly-situated friend and I used to joke that "consciousness is a burden". Sadly, it's no longer funny.
"It must be oh so wonderful to always believe that you're the smartest person in the room!"
It will really get complicated when the heaviest dosed person BELIEVES they are the smartest. How many mg have you had today?
About that topic, Gary Lynch, the inventor says AMPAKINES will not make you the smartest but what it will do is increase the efficiency of what you have to work with (as we've said before, Democrats seem to be at a severe disadvantage). So by increasing the efficiency of their brain, maybe we can make them RINOs as a minimum.
But for ALZHEIMER's, the hope is that with a damaged brain, the efficiency of what's left will be increased so the time to where you need constant care can be increased.
This approach will not be a cure.
But there is hope for FRAGILE X to really make a difference with AMPAKINES.
Elli Lilly's researchers have stated that ampakines (LLY calls them AMPA potentiators) can cure parkinson's disease by raising naturally produced BDNF. This will be BIG news if a company can produce what they term a high impact AMPAKINE (so far they have had problems with excitotoxicity).
CX-717 is called low impact but it is extremely safe. It will increase BDNF about 20-30% in the brain. These growth factors (like HGH) will be big when the average Joe finds out it may delay brain ageing.
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