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Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,alt.psychoactives
I'm not sure, so I've added ALT.PSYCHOACTIVES to the list, since
they seem to discuss them there.
Nootropics, from what I can tell, is pretty much an offshoot of pharmacological
memory research, promoting an emphasis on enhancement of cognitive and
memory functions rather than prophylaxis or treatment of memory disorders,
or illumination of memory mechanisms, as most of the original research was
doing years back when Vasopressin and Piracetam were among the only
compounds in this category, and there was no such commonly used term
as Nootropics.
_Some_ popularly labelled 'smart' chemicals are more nutritional in nature,
often based on the notion that dietary precursors for some neurotransmitters or
neuromodulators can beneficically influence brain chemistry. This has
some legitimate theoretical basis, as with Dr. Wurtman's research at MIT,
but seems to have little reliable clinical support as anything you could use
practicall to improve your performance at complex mental tasks.
While dietary variations can influence levels of brain signalling chemicals,
the nutritional supplements commonly seen seem to effect mental function at
best haphazardly when at all.
_Pharmaceutical_ nootopics (as opposed to the dietary supplements)
sometimes have definite neurological effects, but conclusions about the
significance of those effects in enhancing human mental functions appears
very premature.
There is a good review of 'Smart Drugs' by Steven Rose in the April 17,1993
issue of _New_Scientist_. He surveys the medical literature, evaluates
its quality, and draws some tentative general conclusions about the value
of these drugs. His overall conclusion is that someone looking for
mental performance enhancement would be better advised to seek it
in ancient mnemonic techniques than modern pharmaceuticals.
The same issue also has an article on the general subject, including the
consumer industry around 'Smart' chemicals.
A popular introductory text on drug actions in the brain; Cooper, Bloom, and
Roth's _Biochemical_Basis_of_Neuropharmacology_, devotes a section at the end
to the question "Are there natural memory drugs ?"
The 6th edition (1991) states ...
"Back in the third edition, in our last outing onto the sea of
memory modulators, we mentioned the growing literature on the ability
of natural hormones such as vasopressin and adrenocorticotropin
(ACTH), as well as 'endocrinologically inert' fragments derived
from them, either to repair learning deficiencies in hypophysectomized
rats or to delay or accelerate the extinction of a previously learned
performance.
"Unfortunately, as pathways containing these peptides were more clearly
defined in their projections to targets other than the posterior
pituitary, and as the known barriers to diffusion of these peptides
from the blood stream into the brain were shown to apply to all of
them, this once promising area became a source of contention. However,
this body of research remains an important case study for scholars of
the neuropharmacology of behavior."
They later add, after a discussion of the voluminous research on
vasopressin in particular ...
"Future research will probably establish the superficiality of such
interpretations as the following : (1) vasopressin acts directly
on 'memory processes'; (2) vasopressin can be an aversive
hormone than when given at non-physiological doses arouses the
animal who then learns better. We await eagerly the answers to this
mind-drug-behavior puzzle, but they may not be found in the next
edition, either."