Not only
is the research on those so-called smart drugs severely deficient and
inadequate; but also the evidence on which people make their decision to use
them or not derive largely from anecdotes found on Internet forums, which are
fishy to me and notoriously unreliable.
There are a few problems
as to why the situation on the topic of smart drugs is in disarray. The first is that a distinction between
simple arousal and stimulation versus true learning is often sloppily made or
passed over. The second is that there is
too much emphasis placed on manipulating neurotransmitters, namely choline,
serotonin, histamine, dopamine, and norepinephrine. And the third is that there is a tendency to
deemphasize (or to gloss over altogether) the availability and metabolism of glucose,
as well as the hormones that govern and interact with these processes, such as
insulin, thyroid hormone, and cortisol.
