The Effects and Risks of ADHD Medication Use Among Students: A Study on Performance and Dopamine Levels

2023-06-15 07:00:21

For the study, subjects received one of three drugs: methylphenidate (ritalin), dextroamphetamine, or modafinil. These drugs are often prescribed for ADHD or insomnia, but are also often used by students in the hope of increasing their performance. In 2021, one in twenty students will use ADHD medication without a prescription, according to figures from the Trimbos Institute.

Particularly striking were the individual differences that emerged from the study. The subjects who scored the best without the drug performed worse with the drug. And vice versa. The research is published in the scientific journal Science Advances.

Dopamine

Neuroscientist Roshan Cools thinks it is a good and interesting study. She recently showed that Ritalin only improves people’s performance improves if they have low dopamine levels in their brain. Dopamine is a substance that makes communication between brain cells possible.

“The drugs are essential for people with little dopamine,” says Cools. “People whose dopamine levels are already high, actually perform worse. You disrupt the effect of dopamine by taking those drugs. You then in fact overdose the brain, while a lot of students have excellent focus. In short: watch out.”

Forecast model

So there are all kinds of factors that play a role. How good you are at something, what kind of problem you have to solve, how much dopamine you have in your brain: it all matters for the effect of smart drugs. That makes it almost impossible at the moment to determine who will benefit outside the medical context, and under what circumstances.

Cools and her team are working on developing a prediction model for this, but that is still in the early stages. “We want to be able to predict who will benefit from the drugs and when. We haven’t been able to do that yet,” says Cools. “Users are more awake, they respond faster, but that doesn’t mean that the quality of their problem-solving ability is improving.”

Risks

A certainty is the risk you take by using smart drugs. For example, the possession and trade of many of these substances is prohibited. In addition, some of the users suffer from side effects such as insomnia, palpitations and nausea. “I want to emphasize, there are a lot of people for whom the drugs are drugs,” says Cools. “The shortage that we now see in the Netherlands and Europe is a very big problem for many people.”