Methylphenidate enhances implicit learning in healthy adults.

Item request has been placed! ×
Item request cannot be made. ×
loading   Processing Request
Read More Add to Saved list
  • Additional Information
    • Source:
      Publisher: Sage Publications Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 8907828 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1461-7285 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 02698811 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Psychopharmacol Subsets: MEDLINE
    • Publication Information:
      Publication: Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications
      Original Publication: Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press,
    • Subject Terms:
      Cognition/*drug effects ; Learning/*drug effects ; Methylphenidate/*therapeutic use ; Nootropic Agents/*therapeutic use; Adolescent ; Adult ; Cues ; Double-Blind Method ; Female ; Healthy Volunteers ; Humans ; Male ; Young Adult
    • Abstract:
      Background and Purpose: One limiting factor in the development of pharmacological interventions to enhance cognition is the absence of biomarkers that can be used in healthy volunteers to screen novel compounds. Drug discovery has tended to rely heavily on explicit measures of cognition, but these are typically insensitive to cognition-enhancing effects in healthy volunteers. This study investigated whether a novel battery of implicit cognition measures is sensitive to the effects of methylphenidate (Ritalin) in healthy volunteers.
      Experimental Approach: Eighty healthy volunteers were randomised to receive either a single (10 mg) dose of methylphenidate or matched placebo. Participants completed a battery of tasks measuring implicit cognition (location priming, contextual cueing, implicit task switching). The effect of methylphenidate on standard, explicit measures of cognition was also assessed.
      Key Results: Methylphenidate enhanced implicit learning on the location priming task and the implicit task-switching task. In line with previous work, we found that these effects were greater in male volunteers. There was no evidence for improved learning in any of the explicit measures.
      Conclusion and Implications: These results demonstrate that implicit measures of cognition are sensitive to pharmacological interventions in healthy volunteers. As such, implicit cognition measures may be a useful way of screening and tracking cognitive effects of novel agents in experimental medicine studies.
    • Contributed Indexing:
      Keywords: Methylphenidate; Ritalin; cognition; healthy volunteers; implicit; learning
    • Accession Number:
      0 (Nootropic Agents)
      207ZZ9QZ49 (Methylphenidate)
    • Publication Date:
      Date Created: 20170927 Date Completed: 20191014 Latest Revision: 20191014
    • Publication Date:
      20221213
    • Accession Number:
      10.1177/0269881117731472
    • Accession Number:
      28946787