Modafinil has demonstrated a variety of cognitive enhancement effects in animal studies and is currently being tested in clinical studies. This includes improvements in working memory and other processes that require control of the brain.
Modafinil’s cognitive effects are mediated through the actions of the dopamine (DA) agonist. DA is one of the neurotransmitters linked with vigilance. A recent study reveal that a dose-dependent improvement in the wakefulness that DA induces was linked to enhanced performance on tests of spatial discrimination in rats.
Episodic Memory
A number of studies have proven that modafinil enhances memory test performance for patients suffering from narcolepsy. These effects are linked to more activity in the cingulate and frontal cortex. The use of Modalert Online can improve working memory.
Researchers found that the drug markedly enhanced performance in a variety of working and episodic memory tasks. The researchers also discovered that it did not enhance concentration or long-term memory.
They also note that the study was a temporary trial and that more long-term studies are required to determine if modafinil can have long-term effects on cognition. “Although these findings suggest that modafinil may be a beneficial treatment for symptoms of cognitive depression, further studies are required in order to verify these results as well as to determine the safety of modafinil,” wrote Sahakian and Burdick.
Researchers found that the drug increased the digits’ range (forwards and reverses) and the memory of visual patterns, spatial planning, and stop-signal reaction times. The researchers also discovered that the drug reduced the time needed for completing a delayed match on a sample task. The results suggest that it might be an effective treatment for those suffering from depression and memory disorders, said Sahakian along with Burdick.
Working Memory
Modafinil has shown efficacy in a number of medical and psychiatric illnesses, including fatigue syndromes, treatment-resistant depression, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is evident from neuroimaging and animal models that the effects of these drugs are connected to the correction of cognitive impairment, which involves the activity of the frontal cortex.
In particular, pretreatment with modafinil can result in an improvement in dose-dependent working memory performance in an alternation-based task in mice and does not alter exploration or anxiety-related tasks. This effect is particularly evident in subjects with longer vision P300 durations.
After sleeping through the night, eight healthy men aged 21 to 35 were studied. A single 200-milligramme dose of modafinil enhanced working memory performance with the associated increase in cortical activity. The most significant effect was observed when test using the N-Back test, which assesses spatial memory span and rapid processing of visual information. It also improved the performance of digit span, visually-based pattern recognition memory, and spatial planning. It also decreased the time needed to react to stop signals.
Attention!
Modafinil increases alertness and focus by increasing levels of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. Also, the drug increases neurons found in the preoptic and medial prefrontal cortex.
Modafinil has also been prove to enhance pallidal and striatal GABA concentrations in conscious rodents. This could be due to its effects on striatal GABAA receptors (Ferraro and colleagues, 1998).
Alongside its capacity to improve awakeness, modafinil is believed to enhance memory and improve learning. It is prescribed to treat sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy. Modafinil has been shown to boost the cognitive performance of patients suffering from depression that has remitt.
Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center located in Boston, Massachusetts, measured the effects of a 200-mg dose of modafinil on the work memory capacity of 8 drug-free men aged between 21 and 35. The study showed that modafinil had a significant effect on participants’ working memory, but only at a level intermediate to the task’s difficulty.
Learning
Modafinil enhances memory performance by stimulating the receptor dopamine within Rhesus monkeys that are engage in an oculomotor delay-response test. Modafinil also decreases the impairment in learning due to a 10-hour period of sleep deprivation in mice.
To test the effects of modafinil on learning, sixty young, healthy participants were given an oral dose of placebo or 200 or 100 mg modafinil prior to taking cognitive tests to test the working memory of their subjects and also to measure attention. The results revealed that modafinil performance was much higher than the placebo group’s on every test version after adjusting for any preexisting cognitive impairment.
Another, more thorough study of the data showed no influence of modafinil on subjective feelings or fatigue measured by visual analogue scales (F = 3.595 and P =.06, Ep2 =.05). The findings suggest that modafinil may be capable of improving cognition in patients who have been cure of depression but have persistent cognitive impairment. However, further research is require before the effect is confirm.
The importance of reinstatements in working memory maintenance
We have demonstrated that recalling recent events from episodic memories has an effect that is specific and quantifiable upon the content of the working memory, even with short delay times and without any specific interference. Even in these conditions, can episodic memory restoration affect working memory? The impact of the content of memory in episodic episodes on working memory might be an unintentional coincidence or indicate that lab tests of working memory maintenance miss crucial aspects of how working memory functions in more natural environments. It is possible that the control mechanisms make use of episodic memory in order to “refresh” damaged or degraded representations.
