Many currently contend that since no drug has proven to help play better chess,
drug-testing chessplayers is ridiculous. Yet we all know even common caffeine
in a couple cups of coffee can make you sharper and stave off tiredness in a
long game. It's very unlikely that any drug will ever make a 1600-player into
a GM (sorry), or even turn a GM into a super-GM. But it seems inevitable that
these drugs will have a positive effect on the play of at least some chessplayers.
Sharper
minds
By Melissa Healy, Times Staff Writer
December 20, 2004
Participating in a research project, Stenger downed a green gelatin cap containing
a drug called modafinil. Within an hour, his attention sharpened. So did his
memory. He aced a series of mental-agility tests. If his brainpower would
normally rate a 10, the drug raised it to 15, he said.
"I was quite focused," said Stenger. "It was also kind of
fun."
The age of smart drugs is dawning. Modafinil is just one in an array of brain-boosting
medications — some already on pharmacy shelves and others in development
— that promise an era of sharper thinking through chemistry.
These drugs may change the way we think. And by doing so, they may change
who we are.
The new mind-enhancing drugs, in contrast, hold the potential for more powerful,
more targeted and more lasting improvements in mental acuity. Some of the
most promising have reached the stage of testing in human subjects and could
become available in the next decade, brain scientists say.
"It's not a question of 'if' anymore. It's just a matter of time,"
said geneticist Tim Tully, a researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on
Long Island, N.Y., and developer of a compound called HT-0712, which has shown
promise as a memory enhancer. The drug soon will be tested in human subjects.
Cambridge University psychologist Barbara Sahakian considers modafinil (marketed
commercially under the name Provigil) especially intriguing. Its developers
aren't sure exactly how it keeps drowsiness at bay. But even in healthy people,
the medication appears to deliver measurable improvements with few side effects.
In a series of experiments in 2001, Sahakian and colleagues found that in
games that test mental skill, subjects who took a 200-milligram dose of modafinil
paid closer attention and used information more effectively than subjects
given a sugar pill.
Confronted with conflicting demands, the people on modafinil moved more smoothly
from one task to the next and adjusted their strategies of play with greater
agility. In short, they worked smarter and were better at multi-tasking.
"In my mind, it may be the first real smart drug," Sahakian said.
"A lot of people will probably take modafinil. I suspect they do already."
Judy Illes, a psychologist at Stanford's Center for Biomedical Ethics, said
mind-enhancing medicine could become "as ordinary as a cup of coffee."
This could be good for society, helping people learn faster and retain more,
she said.
But it also raises questions: Will the rich get smarter while the poor fall
further behind? (Drugs such as modafinil can cost as much as $6 per dose.)
Will people feel compelled to use the medications to keep up in school or
in the workplace? In a world where mental function can be tweaked with a pill,
will our notion of "normal intelligence" be changed forever?
Eventually, ambitious parents will start giving mind-enhancing pills to their
children, said McGaugh, the UC Irvine neurobiologist.
"If there is a drug which is safe and effective and not too expensive
for enhancing memory in normal adults, why not normal children?" he said.
"After all, they're going to school, and what's more important than education
of the young? And what would be more important than giving them a little chemical
edge?"
The side effect that most neuroscientists fear is not physical discomfort,
but subtle mental change. Over time, a memory-enhancing drug might cause people
to remember too much detail, cluttering the brain.
Similarly, a drug that sharpens attention might cause users to focus too
intently on a particular task, failing to shift their attention in response
to new developments.
In short, someone who notices or remembers everything may end up understanding
nothing.