Feed your head?

This post is about LSD and other cognitive enhancers in 2009. No, I'm not following up a post on a 1968 drug movie with this one to promote the uses of recreational drugs. As Henry Greeley et al, write in "Towards Responsible Use of Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs by the Healthy", Nature 456/12/11/2008:

Cognitive enhancements affect the most complex and important human organ [the brain], and the risk of unintended side effects is therefore both high and consequential.

One of the practical consequences of the "drug culture" of the 1960s and the collective freak-out over it in much of American society is that actual medical research on LSD and closely related chemicals was largely discontinued.

The National Geographic channel has a documentary called Inside LSD that has recent reporting on the state of LSD medical research.

National Geographic's current summary description of LSD at that Web site, which it classifies as a "soft" drug as distinct from "hard" drugs, a distinction that does not mean the "soft" drugs are harmless. Notice that they list as possible long-term effects "random flashbacks, may develop long-lasting psychoses, such as schizophrenia or severe depression." None of which are desirable.

LSD

Street names: acid, Bart Simpson, microdots, boomers, and yellow sunshine
Usage method: often packaged in small bottles or applied to blotter paper, sugar cubes, gelatin squares, or tablets
Recreational uses: produces delusions and visual hallucinations that distort the user's sense of time and identity
How it works: binds to serotonin receptors in the brain, causing changes in the sensory pathways of the brain
Effects: hallucinations, distortion of time and space, pleasant feelings and thoughts or paranoia, panic, and agitation, subtle changes in body temperature, blood pressure, and pulse, sweating, chills, headache, and nausea
Long-term effects: random flashbacks, may develop long-lasting psychoses, such as schizophrenia or severe depression
Physically addictive: no

Scientific American Oct 2009 has two articles on drug research that especially caught my attention, both of them by science writer Gary Stix, "Turbocharging the Brain" and "Return of a Problem Child".

The first focuses on the potential for some drugs to enhance healthy brain function, as well as treating health problems. He focuses on three types: methylphenidate (commercial names included Ritalin and Concerta) and amphetamines (Adderall), the latter commonly known as speed; modfinil (Provigil); and, donepezil (Aricept).

He quotes Helicon's chief scientific officer Tim Tuylly cautuioning about the superficial way the mass media often handle information about such products:

What the media loves to totally ignore is the side-effect potential and jump right to the wild speculation of this as a lifestyle drug. ... The reality is that if you've got a debilitating form of memory impairment these drugs may be helpful, but they're probably going to be too dangerous for anyone else.

Aside from some real news value to the possibilities of cognitive ehnhancers, there are also great commercial possibilities. Just as athletes find various forms of physically enhancing drugs appealing, drugs that could safely boost intellectual functioning would be enormously appealing to executives, knowledge workers of various kinds and students. As Stix writes:

The potentially huge market has led some companies to tak unorthodox routes to market, revisting a fialed drug or one that did not complete clinical trials and selling it as adietary supplement or as a less stringently regulated "medical food".

A sidebar provides some examples of how the three groups of drugs mentioned above affect cognitive functions (the bullet points are my own wording):

• Methylphenidate and amphetamines: used medically for attention-deficit disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, and chan enhance normal functioning when someone is tired, but can cause addition, heart problems, seizures and hallucinations. In short: it can help you concentreate when you're sleepy but may give you a heart attack.

• Modifinil: used to treat narcolepsy and sleepinessrelated to sleep apnea, may improve concentration and some recall like on long strings of numbers, but can be addictive and also causes skin rashes. Short version: it may help you on a math exam but your skin may break out while you're taking it.

• Donepezil: used in treating Alzheimer's, could possibly help healthy memory and learning but could cause an actual deterioration in cognitive function. Short version: it may help you remember more or forget more, who knows?

Some of these drugs are being used, particularly by students, for non-medical purposes. But the research data Stix cites on their effectiveness as cogntive enhancers in the healthy suggests that the actual benefits are far less than what the users perceive. And the actual benefits themselves are questionable. Or, as Six puts it:

Repackaging old attention-boosting durgs as cognitive enhancers for students, executives and software programmers may produce only marginal benefits over consuming a double espresso.

And presumably they don't taste as good as a double espresso, either.

He mentions four drug classes which drugmakers are using to develop new medical treatments for dementia: nicotinic acetylcholine recptor activators, ampakines, phospho-diesterase (PDE) inhibitors and antihistamines.

The other Gary Stix article is about how new research has been undertaken that last few years to find new medical uses for lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD). A study at the Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy is examining how LSD used under carefuly controlled conditions may help in treating cancer.

With perhaps a bit of psychedelic symbolism, a study is also undnerway at UC-Berkeley on how LSD may enhance creativity, a claim which was made by LSD advocates in the 1960s.

[Full disclosure: I currently have a business relationship with UC-Berkeley though not with that study.]

Tags: cognitive enhancers, lsd