Boosting your brainpower?

The London 2012 Olympics was not just a very fruitful and lucrative opportunity for the UK economy, which benefitted from a £9.9bn boost in trade and investment. It also placed a huge responsibility on the analytical chemists who had the job of identifying the drug cheats and keeping the Games fair.

Now, it seems, that the number of people relying on these chemical cheats for academic purposes is on the rise too. However, just how beneficial are these drugs for enhancing exam performance?

According to a study presented to the American Academy of Paediatrics, 18% of the students at an Ivy League College in the USA reported to misuse of a prescription stimulant (used normally in patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; ADHD) at least once while studying, with 24% of students admitting to have done so on eight or more occasions. Not only that, but a third of the students did not view this misuse as actually “cheating”.

The use of such ‘cognitive enhancing’ drugs has been a hotly debated topic over the past few years, especially with increasing widespread prescription access to drugs such as methylphenidate (Ritalin) and mixed amphetamine salts (Adderall) being used for non-medical (or worse, academic) purposes due to claims that these can increase concentration, memory and allow prolonged periods of attention whilst working.

Such classes of drugs are normally used in medical practice for patients with narcolepsy, fatigue, shift-work, sleep apnoea (a form of sleep disorder) and psychiatric disorders such as ADHD. Of the 616 non-ADHD sophomores sampled in the study, 69% of those who misused stimulants did so to write an essay, 66% to study for an exam and 27% to sit a test.

The survey showed that nearly three times as many students who did misuse ADHD stimulants thought that this was a common practice on their campus, compared to students who did not. Evidence shows that at some US universities, 7% of students regularly use these drugs whilst studying and the trend is expected to increase in the near future.

Interestingly, these drugs are believed to principally benefit (as far as cognitive enhancement is concerned) those individuals who already have ‘below average’ cognitive abilities. A newer drug, modafinil, has shown promise by inhibiting inappropriate impulsive responses and improving performance when fatigue sets in.

However, it has only significantly improved certain types of memory (pattern recognition memory) and is associated with a multitude of side effects. Some of the main side effects of commonly used medication include headache, nausea, dizziness, sleeping problems and a decreased appetite. Although well tolerated by the vast majority of people taking the medications, in under 10% of those affected, these events can be significant. Furthermore, the main worry is of the unknown side effects that these drugs may present with in the future, with increased and more widespread use. Although ADHD patients may consider the side effects of such medication reasonable, is this justifiable in people who take them recreationally or just to ‘pass exams’?

Principle investigator for the study done in the Ivy League College, Natalie Colaneri, agreed that this issue needs to be “approached from an interdisciplinary perspective: as an issue relevant to the practice of medicine, to higher education and to ethics in modern-day society”. Perhaps, we ought to introduce a branch of the World Anti-Doping Agency in schools as well, before the summer exams.