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Yvain comments on Intelligence Amplification Open Thread - Less Wrong
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Next year I have to do a study as a school project. I will probably have access to about 10-20 test subjects, maybe more if I beg, and a lab with a full battery of professional-level cognitive tests. I'd like to study nootropic drugs and see how well they work, but the only one I'm really familiar with, piracetam, is by prescription only in Ireland, and I'm not likely to be able to prescribe it for this study.
So, nootropics experts, can you think of a drug or supplement that needs testing, that you think will return measurable results in a study of only 10-20 people, that works quickly (ie no "have to take this for a month before seeing effects", preferably <2 hr onset of action) and which is sold over-the-counter in Europe?
Sulbutiamine. I don't know whether it will return measurable results for typical biochemistries or not, but I'd very much like to know. I'm also unsure what the test procedure for "reduced mental fatigue" would be like. Maybe give subjects control over their breaks and stopping point for a task, and measure their persistence?
Anecdote: I've tried out sulbutiamine (250-400 mg mixed with 2g piracetam) from smartpowders and didn't notice a difference -- certianly not the momentous results you obtained. However, I'm not diabetic (just fat, quick to sweat, and tired after eating).
Non-expert suggestion: Flax seed oil.
I've had really good success with 5HTP. It begins working in your desired time frame, and has consistently make me calmer, more focused, and more positive.
Piracetam and sulbutiamine didn't seem to do anything for me though.
I'd be VERY careful with 5-HTP . Very careful indeed. I used it for a couple of years and it had some beneficial effects (increased sleep, decreased migraine, decreased depression, general cognitive improvement). But anything that affects your serotonergetic system can have nasty unpredictable effects. In my case, I upped my caffeine intake a lot, without realising that caffeine can have a synergetic effect with 5-HTP, and gave myself mild <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_syndrome">serotonin syndrome</a>. NOT pleasant. In particular, if you take any kind of SSRI, don't touch 5-HTP with a bargepole...
Coincidentally, I recently began trying l-tryptophan (which metabolizes into 5HTP). I think it helps sleep and may've helped motivation, but I'm not sure (coincided with a sleep schedule switch from day to night).
+1 for 5-HTP. I use it as a substitute for melatonin and think it is more broadly useful than melatonin.
More useful than melatonin for sleeping in particular?
My own experience was that 5-HTP had a VERY noticeable effect on my sleep for the first week or two, after which point I built up a tolerance to it in that respect at least. I switched to melatonin after the problems I mentioned above, and that had a much less noticeable effect, but the effect didn't taper off at all as it did with 5-HTP...
It depends on the person; there are genetic factors involved with processing of these kinds of things. 5-HTP is a partial prodrug for melatonin and I don't think is generally less useful than melatonin for sleeping.
Personally, I can't. In nootropics, the more powerful something is the more likely it is to be illegal. If even piracetam is out... (Incidentally, the FDA letter to smartpowders.com banning it from selling piracetam went up on fda.gov today or yesterday.) Maybe the other racetams aren't banned? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetam)
Maybe you'd be better off trying n-backing. That at least is legal, although you might have trouble getting subjects to do enough to matter.
To the best of my knowledge only one small N-back study has been done and the results were strongly positive. There would be significant social value in getting more data on N-Backing.
http://www.gwern.net/N-back%20FAQ#support
Besides Jaeggi 2008, there have been 2 or 3 studies supporting it to some degree, and 2 or 3 studies opposing it to some degree.
Has anyone ever done a systematic review of the literature for studies of nootropics that looked at cognitive outcomes in healthy people?
This commentary from Nature indicates that there have only been a few trials. It might be worth the trouble to compile a database of all the trials of the compounds we're interested in.
Anyone else use Mendeley? You can share a public database of documents among users.
Sulbutiamine could use some more study and is significant enough in effects that it would show a difference on that scale of investigation.
Thanks, that's my first choice right now. Just got to find out how to find out if it's legal here.
So what did you find out?
That it is very difficult to learn what supplements are and aren't legal in Ireland, especially since the appropriate government website seems permanently down. If anyone has a good idea how you'd go about it, let me know. Otherwise, I'm going to wait until I see my pharmacist friend and ask her how you find these things out.
You're of course aware of power and sample size considerations. With 20 participants, you'd need a pretty precise instrument or a very large effect size to get a useful answer, no?
I haven't done research in cognitive science. Do you have fine measures of important cognitive function? Is expecting a large effect realistic?
Very cool if you can get some useful data though!
Yvain, are there any cognitive tests that can measure creativity?
I'm also curious about nootropics that improve focus and or mood, which seems to difficult to measure. Coffee and aderall work in this category, but I wonder how you test other potential nootropics for those effects.
Focus is sometimes tested by giving people a task and introducing distracting influences in a controlled manner. I recall nicotine being tested on children in this way (it works about as well as Adderall if memory serves me.) But there isn't too much incentive for people to formally research this kind of thing for most nootropics so a lot of the time we just have ad hoc anecdotal reports to go by.
Modafinil is better for boosting mood than caffeine or adderall, especially in as much as it tends to provoke less agitation. The effect on focus is not quite as pronounced as with the amphetamine. This is sometimes considered a good thing when the overfocus is detrimental (eg. when socialising or exposed to TvTropes.)
Selegeline also improves both focus and mood - in a more subtle way over periods of weeks (irreversible MAOB inhibition doesn't 'rebound' after a few hours).
For mood specifically try Phenylethylamine while you are taking selegeline (carefully!) or use phenibut.
I don't know how reliable it would be, but you can try a book of "lateral thinking puzzles."