Some Professors Pop Pills for an Intellectual Edge

Scientists say drugs help concentration

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Survey: Professors and Pills

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By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

Professors know that some of their students pop Ritalin and other stimulants to give themselves a mental edge, but an informal survey suggests that some faculty members are also taking drugs for the express purpose of helping their careers.

In an online survey of 1,400 readers published this month, the journal Nature found that 20 percent had taken pharmaceuticals for the nonmedical purpose of improving their concentration, focus, and memory. Most of the people who responded to the survey work in science, engineering, or education. "The numbers suggest a significant amount of drug taking among academics," the journal said.

Others question that pronouncement, noting that the survey was not rigorously designed and that it is unclear how many of the respondents were academics. Nonetheless, even these critics agree that the results suggest that some scientific professionals are taking drugs to improve their mental performance.

"The survey has a kind of qualitative legitimacy," wrote Martha J. Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, in an e-mail message to The Chronicle. "It tells us what kinds of practices and attitudes are out there — but there's no way you can draw any conclusions about the numbers of people in the general academic population using these drugs from the survey."

The topic of drugs that enhance cognition has recently emerged as an important discussion in the nascent field of neuroethics. The British Medical Association released a discussion paper in November titled "Boosting Your Brainpower: Ethical Aspects of Cognitive Enhancements." And in an editorial, Nature said the new survey results should force people to reconsider definitions of what is natural. While many might view cognitive-enhancing drugs as unnatural, so are glasses, hearing aids, pacemakers, artificial hips, and prep courses, said Nature.

The Nature survey focused on three drugs: Ritalin, the antisleep drug Provigil, and beta blockers (which are used to treat cardiac conditions but can also reduce anxiety). Over 60 percent of the people who admitted using the drugs for cognitive reasons said they took Ritalin, while 44 percent said they used Provigil, which is known generically as modafinil. Some 15 percent said they had taken beta blockers.

Respondents who said they used such drugs were evenly split among people who took them daily, weekly, monthly, and once a year. Nine out of 10 of those respondents said they used the medications to improve concentration and attention. Many said they took them to enhance memory, problem solving, and planning. It was not clear from the survey how many of the people using such drugs had prescriptions for them.

The survey's findings trouble some scientists. Wilson M. Compton, director of the division of epidemiology, services, and prevention research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is particularly concerned by the high percentage of people who said they were taking Ritalin, which can be addictive. "The attitude toward these drugs indicated by this survey is that people see them as being safe and not a concern," he said. "That's a problem when these are potentially addictive and can be associated with complications."

The survey shows that "scientists are not immune to substance abuse," he said. "This is an example where you think people who are highly educated and knowledgeable might know better, and that's not necessarily the case."

Potentially Serious Side Effects

Provigil is less well known than Ritalin, and Dr. Compton said he did not know of any reports that it is addictive. The drug helps people stay awake and is most often prescribed for treating narcolepsy and other sleep disorders. It can have rare but potentially severe side effects, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which sent out a warning to physicians in October.

Academics generally use beta blockers for different purposes than they might take Provigil, Dr. Compton said. One common reason is to counteract the rapid heart beat and hand tremors that some people experience when giving public talks.

Nature decided to conduct its survey as a follow-up to a commentary late last year by two scientists from the University of Cambridge who reported that several colleagues in the United States and Britain were using Provigil. The academics said they took the drug to counteract jet lag, to improve concentration, or to stay awake in order to get more work done.

Sharon Morein-Zamir, a research associate at Cambridge and one of the authors of the original commentary, said the new survey is valuable because it provides the first data on how professionals think about and use cognitive-enhancing drugs. While it is difficult to draw firm conclusions on the number of academics using the drugs, she said, the survey results revealed interesting attitudes among science professionals.

According to the Nature survey, most of the people who said they used cognitive-enhancing drugs did so to improve concentration. Eight out of 10 people who responded to the survey — even those who had not tried cognitive-enhancing drugs — said healthy people should be allowed to use such drugs. Seven out of 10 said they would take such drugs to improve their mental performance, if the side effects were mild. A third of the respondents said they would feel pressure to give cognitive-enhancing drugs to their children if other students at school were taking them.

Although Provigil is less well known than the other drugs in the survey, it has drawn attention recently in part because its use may be spreading in some academic circles. Several scientists contacted by The Chronicle said they had either tried Provigil or knew of other colleagues who had taken it.

Henry T. Greely, a bioethicist and professor of law at Stanford University, wrote in an e-mail message that some academics and physicians had told him they used Provigil: "Several have talked about using it to deal with jet lag after long or red-eye flights (or, among physicians, for night call.)" He had not heard of people using it to pull all-nighters.

Ms. Farah, of the University of Pennsylvania, said she had received a prescription for Provigil and had used it for two overseas trips. She said it was fairly common among some academics she knew to get a prescription for Provigil to counteract the effects of jet lag. One graduate student told her that he takes it once a week to stay awake all night so he can catch up on his work.

David Bell, dean of faculty at the Johns Hopkins University's Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, said he had not heard of faculty members there using drugs to improve their cognitive performance. But the survey results raise interesting issues, he said. Although it might be tempting to draw parallels between such drugs and doping in sports, he said there was a fundamental difference. If people are using the drugs legally, under the care of a physician, he said, "one could make the argument that this is being done for the greater benefit of humanity." It could, for example, help academics make advances toward curing diseases.

The 'Myth' of Smart Drugs

Relatively few studies have tested whether cognitive enhancers actually do improve the brain power of healthy people. An investigation in 2003 found that Provigil provided some benefits in the laboratory setting. In that study, which examined 60 young men, researchers from the University of Cambridge found that the drug improved performance on certain cognitive tests, such as those involving memory and spatial planning. The subjects who had taken Provigil said they felt more alert and attentive. "The results of this investigation suggest that modafinil offers significant potential as a cognitive enhancer, particularly with respect to its effects on planning, accuracy, and inhibition," wrote the investigators in the journal Psychopharmacology.

But studies of student drug use might raise some concern. Amelia M. Arria, associate director of the Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland at College Park, has tracked a cohort of college students from a large public university in the mid-Atlantic region since they were freshmen in the fall of 2003. In the February issue of Pharmacotherapy, her team estimated that 13.5 percent of the freshmen at the unidentified university had used prescription stimulants for nonmedical reasons once in their lifetimes, and 10 percent had in the past year.

The team also found a connection between nonmedical use of stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall and other problems. "The people who overuse stimulants were more likely to have a history of illicit-drug involvement," she said.

Students who were taking stimulants hoping to improve their academic performance actually received lower grades than their peers, according to Ms. Arria. "They're not achieving the desired effect of the drug," she said. "I take issue with the myth that these are smart drugs and that there's some shortcut to academic success."