Study: Illicit use of ADHD meds won’t boost grades
Many college students turn to ADHD medications during exam week, treating the prescription stimulants as “smart drugs” that will enhance their academic performance.
But a new study shows that drugs like Adderall do not improve, and can actually impair, brain function in healthy students who take the drug hoping for an intelligence boost, consumer.healthday.com wrote.
“It’s not a smart drug. It was not suddenly improving their ability to comprehend information they were reading,” said lead researcher Lisa Weyandt, a professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island.
As many as a third of college students have reported turning to ADHD medications to give themselves an edge on their studies, Weyandt said.
The thinking is that if the drugs help kids with ADHD improve their focus, they should provide the same benefit for people who don’t have the disorder, she said.
To test whether this effect is real or not, she and her colleagues recruited 13 students to participate in two five-hour study sessions in the lab. The students took a standard 30-milligram dose of Adderall before one session, and a placebo capsule before the other.
Students on Adderall did experience an increase in their blood pressure and heart rate. “The medication was having a physiological effect on their brain,” Weyandt said.
The students also showed an improvement in their alertness and their ability to focus, the researchers found.
However, that added focus did not translate into a better ability to think, remember and problemsolve.
Students on Adderall experienced no improvement in reading comprehension, reading fluency or factual recall, compared to when they’d taken a placebo, Weyandt said.
Worse, the ADHD stimulant actually impaired students’ working memory, Weyandt said.
People with ADHD often have less neural activity in regions of the brain that control working memory, attention and self-control, Weyandt said. Adderall and similar medications increase activity in those regions, bringing them up to normal levels.
The new study was published recently in the journal Pharmacy.
Essentially, ADHD drugs provide no benefit to typical college students, said Dr. Victor Fornari, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y. He was not involved with the study.
“They’re often misused because people pull all-nighters and they’re tired, and they think it’s going to keep them awake. Maybe it does, but it’s certainly not going to help with their academic work,” Fornari said.