Smart drugs, or
“nootropics,” are a topic I’ve stayed cleared of until now because, well, the
idea of using them was stupid. Not only
is the research on those so-called smart drugs severely deficient and
inadequate; but also the evidence on which people make their decision to use
them or not derive largely from anecdotes found on Internet forums, which are
fishy to me and notoriously unreliable.
There are a few problems as to why the situation on the topic of smart drugs is in disarray. The first is that a distinction between simple arousal and stimulation versus true learning is often sloppily made or passed over. The second is that there is too much emphasis placed on manipulating neurotransmitters, namely choline, serotonin, histamine, dopamine, and norepinephrine. And the third is that there is a tendency to deemphasize (or to gloss over altogether) the availability and metabolism of glucose, as well as the hormones that govern and interact with these processes, such as insulin, thyroid hormone, and cortisol.
