{"id":16537,"date":"2015-08-20T19:01:40","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T02:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/this-narcolepsy-smart-drug-makes-ordinary-people-smarter"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:24:57","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:24:57","slug":"this-narcolepsy-smart-drug-makes-ordinary-people-smarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/this-narcolepsy-smart-drug-makes-ordinary-people-smarter","title":{"rendered":"This narcolepsy \u2018smart drug\u2019 makes ordinary people smarter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-narcolepsy-smart-drug-makes-ordinary-people-smarter.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A medication called modafinil is commonly used to <a href=\"\/meds-reduce-apnea-crashes\">treat people who experience narcolepsy<\/a>, but it\u2019s suspected that the vast majority of those who use the drug are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/2015\/aug\/20\/narcolepsy-medication-modafinil-worlds-first-safe-smart-drug\">taking it for another purpose<\/a> that isn\u2019t medically authorised: as a general cognitive enhancer for tasks such as studying or meeting a deadline. <\/p>\n<p>Now a comprehensive review of the medication has looked at this \u2018off licence\u2019 use of the drug by healthy, non-sleep-deprived subjects to determine whether modafinil is safe \u2013 and to confirm whether the belief that it acts as a general-purpose \u2018smart drug\u2019 is grounded in reality. <\/p>\n<p>According to researchers from the University of Oxford in the UK and Harvard Medical School in the US, modafinil delivers on both counts, constituting what\u2019s thought to be the first safe smart drug that can provide demonstrable cognitive and concentration benefits. Brainpower in a pill, in other words.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/this-narcolepsy-smart-drug-makes-ordinary-people-smarter\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A medication called modafinil is commonly used to treat people who experience narcolepsy, but it\u2019s suspected that the vast majority of those who use the drug are taking it for another purpose that isn\u2019t medically authorised: as a general cognitive enhancer for tasks such as studying or meeting a deadline. Now a comprehensive review of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69687,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16537\/revisions\/69687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}