The DOI matches its Crossref record; 27 of the 27 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Are prescription stimulants “smart pills”? The epidemiology and cognitive neuroscience of prescription stimulant use by normal healthy individuals.
Open accessAbstract
Use of prescription stimulants by normal healthy individuals to enhance cognition is said to be on the rise. Who is using these medications for cognitive enhancement, and how prevalent is this practice? Do prescription stimulants in fact enhance cognition for normal healthy people? We review the epidemiological and cognitive neuroscience literatures in search of answers to these questions. Epidemiological issues addressed include the prevalence of nonmedical stimulant use, user demographics, methods by which users obtain prescription stimulants, and motivations for use. Cognitive neuroscience issues addressed include the effects of prescription stimulants on learning and executive function, as well as the task and individual variables associated with these effects. Little is known about the prevalence of prescription stimulant use for cognitive enhancement outside of student populations. Among college students, estimates of use vary widely but, taken together, suggest that the practice is commonplace. The cognitive effects of stimulants on normal healthy people cannot yet be characterized definitively, despite the volume of research that has been carried out on these issues. Published evidence suggests that declarative memory can be improved by stimulants, with some evidence consistent with enhanced consolidation of memories. Effects on the executive functions of working memory and cognitive control are less reliable but have been found for at least some individuals on some tasks. In closing, we enumerate the many outstanding questions that remain to be addressed by future research and also identify obstacles facing this research.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Be smart, exercise your heart: Exercise effects on brain and cognition
Hillman, C. H., Erickson, K. I., & Kramer, A. F. (2008) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn2298 · Cited by 3,563
(1999) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.56.12.1073 · Cited by 3,372
Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation
Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2008) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.005 · Cited by 2,659
The hopkins verbal learning test: Development of a new memory test with six equivalent forms
Brandt, J. (1991) · Clinical Neuropsychologist · doi:10.1080/13854049108403297 · Cited by 1,317
Not All Executive Functions Are Related to Intelligence
Friedman, N. P., Miyake, A., Corley, R. P., Young, S. E., DeFries, J. C., & Hewitt, J. K. (2006) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01681.x · Cited by 1,293
The Neuropsychopharmacology of Fronto-Executive Function: Monoaminergic Modulation
Robbins, T. W., & Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.051508.135535 · Cited by 957
Mattay, V. S., Goldberg, T. E., Fera, F., Hariri, A. R., Tessitore, A., Egan, M. F., Kolachana, B., Callicott, J. H., & Weinberger, D. R. (2003) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0931309100 · Cited by 893
Modafinil: a review of neurochemical actions and effects on cognition
Minzenberg, M. J., & Carter, C. S. (2008) · Neuropsychopharmacology · doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1301534 · Cited by 713
Mehta, M. A., Owen, A. M., Sahakian, B. J., Mavaddat, N., Pickard, J. D., & Robbins, T. W. (2000) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.20-06-j0004.2000 · Cited by 608 · cited 2×
“The question of which of these task differences correspond to differences between distinct working memory systems and which correspond to different ways of using a single underlying system is a matter of debate (e.g., D’Esposito, Postle, & Rypma, 2000; Owen, 2000).”
Acute administration of d-amphetamine decreases impulsivity in healthy volunteers
de Wit, H. (2002) · Neuropsychopharmacology · doi:10.1016/s0893-133x(02)00343-3 · Cited by 436
Cited by
Sharma, A., & Couture, J. (2014) · Annals of Pharmacotherapy · doi:10.1177/1060028013510699 · Cited by 516
Trends in Mental Health Care among Children and Adolescents
Olfson, M., Druss, B. G., & Marcus, S. C. (2015) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmsa1413512 · Cited by 408
Adult Attention Deficit–Hyperactivity Disorder
Volkow, N. D., & Swanson, J. M. (2013) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmcp1212625 · Cited by 227
Cognitive effects of methylphenidate in healthy volunteers: a review of single dose studies
Linssen, A. M. W., Sambeth, A., Vuurman, E. F. P. M., & Riedel, W. J. (2014) · The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology · doi:10.1017/s1461145713001594 · Cited by 159
The unknowns of cognitive enhancement
Farah, M. J. (2015) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aad5893 · Cited by 115
Self-citationRoberts, C. A., Jones, A., Sumnall, H., Gage, S. H., & Montgomery, C. (2020) · European Neuropsychopharmacology · doi:10.1016/j.euroneuro.2020.07.002 · Cited by 78
Enhancement stimulants: perceived motivational and cognitive advantages
Ilieva, I. P., & Farah, M. J. (2013) · Frontiers in Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnins.2013.00198 · Cited by 72
Self-citationHartung, C. M., Canu, W. H., Cleveland, C. S., Lefler, E. K., Mignogna, M. J., Fedele, D. A., Correia, C. J., Leffingwell, T. R., & Clapp, J. D. (2013) · Psychology of Addictive Behaviors · doi:10.1037/a0033822 · Cited by 62
Neurocognitive, Autonomic, and Mood Effects of Adderall: A Pilot Study of Healthy College Students
Weyandt, L. L., White, T. L., Gudmundsdottir, B. G., Nitenson, A. Z., Rathkey, E. S., De Leon, K. A., & Bjorn, S. A. (2018) · Pharmacy · doi:10.3390/pharmacy6030058 · Cited by 43
Cropsey, K. L., Schiavon, S., Hendricks, P. S., Froelich, M., Lentowicz, I., & Fargason, R. (2017) · Drug and Alcohol Dependence · doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2017.05.024 · Cited by 39
Schmitz, F., Pierozan, P., Rodrigues, A. F., Biasibetti, H., Grings, M., Zanotto, B., Coelho, D. M., Vargas, C. R., Leipnitz, G., & Wyse, A. T. S. (2017) · Molecular Neurobiology · doi:10.1007/s12035-016-0289-1 · Cited by 35
Methylphenidate alters selective attention by amplifying salience
ter Huurne, N., Fallon, S. J., van Schouwenburg, M., van der Schaaf, M., Buitelaar, J., Jensen, O., & Cools, R. (2015) · Psychopharmacology · doi:10.1007/s00213-015-4059-y · Cited by 31
Does COMT genotype influence the effects of d‐amphetamine on executive functioning?
Wardle, M. C., Hart, A. B., Palmer, A. A., & de Wit, H. (2013) · Genes, Brain and Behavior · doi:10.1111/gbb.12012 · Cited by 29
Cope, Z. A., Minassian, A., Kreitner, D., MacQueen, D. A., Milienne-Petiot, M., Geyer, M. A., Perry, W., & Young, J. W. (2017) · Neuropharmacology · doi:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2017.07.031 · Cited by 27
Stimulants, cognition and ADHD
Baroni, A., & Castellanos, F. X. (2015) · Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.04.010 · Cited by 14
Kassim, F. M. (2023) · Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental · doi:10.1002/hup.2856 · Cited by 11
“Likewise, a previous sys- tematic review (Smith & Farah, 2011) concluded that the cognitive effects of AMP or derivatives are inconsistent except that it has enhanced some subdomains in some individuals.”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Smith, M. E., & Farah, M. J.
- Venue
- Psychological Bulletin
- Published
- 2011-09
- Volume
- 137
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 717-741
- ISSN
- 0033-2909 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1455
- OpenAlex
- W2099564435
- Cited by
- 440
- References
- 27
- FWCI
- 18.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
