People have been searching for ways to boost their brainpower for centuries, but until now there hasn’t been any smart pill that reliably works without serious side effects. A 2015 study in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology by Oxford researchers Ruairidh Battleday and Anna-Katherine Brem found that modafinil significantly improves cognitive ability, specifically memory, learning, and attention.
Increased Focus
Several studies have shown that modafinil can improve cognitive function. One study found that a single dose of modafinil 200 mg improved errors on the Wisconsin Card Sort Test and interference on the Stroop task, improving performance over a placebo.
Researchers have also studied resting brain activity while subjects are under the influence of modafinil. They have found that the smart pill increases FC between V1 and prefrontal regions, suggesting that it boosts executive functions such as attention and working memory.
A review of 24 studies by neuropsychologists Ruairidh Battleday and Anna-Katharine Brem found that the longer and more complex the cognitive tasks, the more consistently Buy Modalert 200 Australia enhanced performance. The most consistent benefits were seen in planning and decision-making, flexibility, and learning.
Better Memory
Interestingly, modafinil has also been found to enhance memory. In fact, one study that compared modafinil to d-amphetamine (like Adderall) and placebo during 64 hours of sleep deprivation found that the smart pill significantly reduced errors in the Wisconsin Card Sort Test as well as interference on the Stroop test.
Additionally, other studies have found that Modafinil 200 mg improves performance in tasks like spatial working memory, planning, and decision-making. However, it does appear to improve learning or creativity.
The randomized controlled trials of cognitive enhancement with modafinil that have been performed to date have been very promising. The smart pill has been shown to be the first well-validated pharmaceutical nootropic that enhances cognitive functions in healthy individuals. This makes it a good candidate for remediating cognitive dysfunction associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.
Better Attention
The smart pill modafinil, originally developed to treat narcolepsy, has recently been used off-label as a cognitive enhancer. It is often taken by people who wish to improve their performance in specific contexts such as exam preparation.
Although there is no scientific consensus on the cognitive effects of modafinil, a number of studies have found that it can improve attention and cognition in healthy individuals who are not sleep-deprived. For example, a randomized placebo-controlled study of military recruits who received either modafinil or d-amphetamine after a 64-hour work shift found that the medication improved their accuracy on logical reasoning and RT tasks.
Other studies have reported delay-dependent enhancements in working memory, impulse control, and vigilance in people taking a single dose of modafinil in comparison to a placebo. In these studies, there was no speed-accuracy trade-off effect.
Increased Creativity
There are many people on forums such as Longecity and Reddit who talk about modafinil helping them to increase their creativity. However, there are very few studies that look at the creative abilities of healthy people who take stimulants such as modafinil. One study that did examine the creative abilities of people who took stimulants showed that they had a much lower level of convergent creativity than those who didn’t take them.
Another study did find that the longer and more complex the task, the better the cognitive enhancing effects of modafinil were. They also found that the smart pill did improve decision-making, planning, and flexible thinking but did not impact creativity. The only other negative effect was that people who were classed as very creative saw a small drop in their creativity when taking the smart pill.
Increased Decision Making
In recent years, cognitive enhancement smart pills (CED) have gained interest due to their ability to improve cognition in subjects with specific pathological conditions and also in healthy individuals. However, these smart pills are often abused by non-medical users owing to their potential for causing adverse side effects like irritability and aggression.
Several studies have found modafinil to improve performance on cognitive tasks. For example, pre-treatment with modafinil enhances working memory performance on a delayed nonmatching to position task while not affecting exploratory activity or anxiety-related brain activation and dose-dependently improves the rate of spontaneous alternation on a serial reversal discrimination task.
Another study of adults experiencing sleep deprivation or a simulated night shift found that a 4-day modafinil regimen reduced errors on the Wisconsin Card Sort Test and interference on the Stroop task compared to placebo, demonstrating improvement in cognitive control. This finding supports the hypothesis that CEDs could compensate for cognitive decline in MCI and early-stage dementia patients by enhancing inhibitory control.