Neurocognitive, Autonomic, and Mood Effects of Adderall: A Pilot Study of Healthy College Students

Abstract

Prescription stimulant medications are considered a safe and long-term effective treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Studies support that stimulants enhance attention, memory, self-regulation and executive function in individuals with ADHD. Recent research, however, has found that many college students without ADHD report misusing prescription stimulants, primarily to enhance their cognitive abilities. This practice raises the question whether stimulants actually enhance cognitive functioning in college students without ADHD. We investigated the effects of mixed-salts amphetamine (i.e., Adderall, 30 mg) on cognitive, autonomic and emotional functioning in a pilot sample of healthy college students without ADHD (n = 13), using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects design. The present study was the first to explore cognitive effects in conjunction with mood, autonomic effects, and self-perceptions of cognitive enhancement. Results revealed that Adderall had minimal, but mixed, effects on cognitive processes relevant to neurocognitive enhancement (small effects), and substantial effects on autonomic responses, subjective drug experiences, and positive states of activated emotion (large effects). Overall, the present findings indicate dissociation between the effects of Adderall on activation and neurocognition, and more importantly, contrary to common belief, Adderall had little impact on neurocognitive performance in healthy college students. Given the pilot design of the study and small sample size these findings should be interpreted cautiously. The results have implications for future studies and the education of healthy college students and adults who commonly use Adderall to enhance neurocognition.

The Impact of Personal Values and Justifications on Academic Cheating for Business vs. Non-Business Students

“…Adderall without a prescription (Yanes, 2014). Furthermore, recent ndings (Weyandt et al, 2018) suggest that Adderall has minimal (or even adverse) impacts on cognitive processes for non-ADHD college students (thus making it unlikely to actually increase academic performance).…”

Cognitive Enhancement: Unanswered Questions About Human Psychology and Social Behavior

“…Barriers to conducting meaningful and representative research on cognitive enhancement (Brown, 2019 ; Forlini et al, 2013 ) could include the under-representation of different minority groups based on documented challenges in other areas of research (Diaz, 2012 ; George et al, 2014 ) in addition to the possibility of misalignment of enhancement with different cultural values (Brown, 2019 ). There are also foreseeable difficulties recruiting healthy subjects, difficulties securing funding, and the difficulty of justifying research in pediatric contexts given current research ethics guidelines (d'Angelo et al, 2017 ; Forlini et al, 2013 ; Weyandt et al, 2018 ). Surveying populations of existing (non-)users does not entail the same risks, but the usefulness of such studies for testing causal relationships is restricted.…”

Hero: Automated Detection System for Prescription Stimulant Overdose via AI-Based Emotion Inference, Metabolite Detection, and Biometric Measurement

“…Although prescription stimulant misuse is a problem that can affect individuals of all demographics, adolescents and young adults are at the highest risk [3]. While prescription stimulants have been coined as "party" drugs and "weight loss" drugs, adolescents most commonly abuse it as a "cognitive steroid" [4]. Students are able to study for long hours, retain more information, and focus more attentively with the help of spiked norepinephrine levels [1].…”