Cognitive Enhancing Drugs: Used Recklessly or Medically Recommended Essay Example
Cognitive Enhancing Drugs: Used Recklessly or Medically Recommended
Advances in cognitive drugs are generating exciting medication for many neurological diseases, which also have usage for people who don’t medically need treatment. This medicine can help the body and brain function better by modulating the motor and cognitive structures (Chatterjee, 2004). With this improved development, yields multiple possibilities to a healthy, functioning person’s system. But despite this new advancement, it raises many ethical concerns.
Numerous studies have conducted various pros and cons of this new found advancement based on the health, ability and risks of taking the medication. These drugs are known as cognition enhancers. They work on the neural processes that underlie such mental activities as attention, perception, learning, memory, language, planning and decision-making, usually by altering the balance of the chemical neurotransmitters involved in these processes (“The Economist”, 2008). One major topic is that perfectly capable students have learned to use cognitive drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin, which are classified as Class two controlled substances, to dramatically increase alertness and focus for their studies. These drugs are highly addictive and carry many risk factors such as deterioration to the prefrontal cortex that changes the chemistry of the brain fundamentally. Recent research shows that drug abuse alters cognitive activities such as decision-making and inhibition, likely setting the stage for addiction and relapse (Carpenter, 2001). The implications related to these drugs are not insignificant; it’s extremely hard to break the addiction because these drugs are known to work; and many students are finding it hard to stop after seeing the positive results from the drug usage. Like a student noted, “Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, it's not scary anymore - especially when you're getting A's.” But what students aren’t
Advances in cognitive drugs are generating exciting medication for many neurological diseases, which also have usage for people who don’t medically need treatment. This medicine can help the body and brain function better by modulating the motor and cognitive structures (Chatterjee, 2004). With this improved development, yields multiple possibilities to a healthy, functioning person’s system. But despite this new advancement, it raises many ethical concerns.
Numerous studies have conducted various pros and cons of this new found advancement based on the health, ability and risks of taking the medication. These drugs are known as cognition enhancers. They work on the neural processes that underlie such mental activities as attention, perception, learning, memory, language, planning and decision-making, usually by altering the balance of the chemical neurotransmitters involved in these processes (“The Economist”, 2008). One major topic is that perfectly capable students have learned to use cognitive drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin, which are classified as Class two controlled substances, to dramatically increase alertness and focus for their studies. These drugs are highly addictive and carry many risk factors such as deterioration to the prefrontal cortex that changes the chemistry of the brain fundamentally. Recent research shows that drug abuse alters cognitive activities such as decision-making and inhibition, likely setting the stage for addiction and relapse (Carpenter, 2001). The implications related to these drugs are not insignificant; it’s extremely hard to break the addiction because these drugs are known to work; and many students are finding it hard to stop after seeing the positive results from the drug usage. Like a student noted, “Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, it's not scary anymore - especially when you're getting A's.” But what students aren’t