Boosting the brain

Many brain researchers are working on ways and means of boosting the brain to conquer fatigue, sleep, and errors. They want to find the key to helping soldiers fight future wars. US military researchers are leading the way through grants from Darpa (Defense Advanced Project Research Agency). The goal is to produce better soldiers.

The US military wants to boost the capacity of its soldiers because they are the weakest weapon of warfare. They must eat, think, sleep, and heal wounds. And the first country that can produce brain-booster pills, potions, or processes can easily win any war.

Researchers want to first conquer the problem of mental fatigue, which is the main cause of “friendly fire” that partly contributed to the killing of four Canadian soldiers and the wounding of eight others in Afghanistan in 2002. The pilots involved in this incident were alleged to be on Dexedrine to keep them alert for a 30-hour mission.

The US military is now looking into a drug called modafinil, which is being used by many long-distance travellers. It was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as Provigil in 1998 to treat narcolepsy, a condition that causes excessive daytime sleepiness, and other sleep disorders associated with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. Provigil is not a stimulant like Dexedrine. It is believed to nudge the brain to wakefulness through increased serotonin in the brain stem.

Many travellers who have used Provigil report that a dose is as refreshing as a short nap. Frequent fliers are getting a prescription for the stuff. Soon it will be a craze among college students who want to do an all-nighter to study or to party. Those who change their work hours from day to night and back again are also watching because they complain of drowsiness while at work and insomnia at bedtime.

In a study of 16 healthy individuals who were deprived of sleep for 28 hours then obliged to sleep from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. for four days and to stay awake for those nights were put on modafinil. They did better in a cognitive test than those on sugar pills. Some of those on modafinil stayed awake for more than 90 hours.

Unconfirmed newspaper reports claimed that US soldiers used modafinil on the way to Baghdad in 2003. The newspaper Guardian reported in 2004 that Britain’s Ministry of Defense had bought 24,000 tablets of the drug.

With the popularity of modafinil, safety concerns are bound to arise. After prolonged use, does it compromise the immune and endocrine systems? No one yet knows.

US military scientists are looking into these concerns. One researcher at the US Air Force’s Brooks City base in San Antonio, Texas, told the online newsletter Pentagram: “All indications say modafinil is a safe drug, but we don’t know for sure.”

According to studies, people who sleep four hours or less a day for a prolonged period show increased resistance to insulin—a sign of impending diabetes. The US military is concerned because infantrymen commonly sleep for only three to four hours nightly for weeks. And Special Forces members may be awake for several days during a rescue operation.

Because of the known outcomes of lack of sleep and fatigue, Darpa is spending $100 million on research on “prevention of degradation of cognitive performance due to sleep deprivation.” The US defense office has said that “if you can prevent bad decisions from being made during sleep deprivation, you can dominate the battlefield.”

Ampakines are another class of drugs that the US military is investigating. These have shown promise in treating the symptoms of schizophrenia and dementia as well as improving cognition when used with antipsychotic drugs. Ampakines have been tried on sleep-deprived rhesus monkeys; these eliminated their performance deficit.

In an unpublished study, an ampakine tagged CX717 was shown to improve memory and attention in 16 men who were deprived of sleep after taking the drug. There is an increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, dorsal striatum, and medial temporal lobe (including the hippocampus) that was significantly enhanced over normal alert conditions following the administration of CX717. The researchers who conducted the study said they “didn’t see any adverse events.”

It is not only the US military but also the civilian population that is interested in the matter. Civilian scientists have found that the key to unlocking the secrets of sleep may be found in a region in the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. This pinhead-size structure is composed of 20,000 neurons and acts as the pacemaker for circadian rhythms in mammals. If it is removed in animals, their sleep-wake cycle is messed up in a big way.

Because drugs have many side effects, researchers are looking to electricity and magnetism to enhance cognitive skills by targeting specific brain centers. When electrodes are implanted in the motor cortex of stroke victims, they regain 30 percent of lost functions compared to 10 percent in other patients. Although this new approach is not yet perfect, the improvement for those whose arms or legs have gone limp is a long-awaited gift. And for those with a speech problem, the implanted electrodes will be a godsend. But if you ask the researchers how the electricity works, they don’t know exactly how.

If electricity can improve muscle strength, can it also help improve cognitive power in healthy people? This is an interesting question that neuroscientists are exploring by using DC (direct-current) polarization. At the 2004 Society for Neuroscience conference, researchers of the National Institutes of Health reported that a small amount of electricity delivered to the brain through an electrode in the scalp resulted in improved verbal skills. There is a 20-percent improvement when two-thousandths of an ampere—lesser energy needed to run a digital watch—is turned on.

How does it work? Researchers think that as electrical current passes to the prefrontal cortex, the CEO of the brain, the firing rate of the neurons is increased, stimulating the cells involved in word output. When perfected, this technique will be a boon to TV and radio announcers, actors, even politicians.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is another possible technological gift waiting to be harnessed. With the use of a magnetic coil above the head, magnetic pulses are beamed through the cortex. The aim of TMS is to change the rate of neural-firing in order to treat stroke or dementia patients.

In the next few years, when neuroscientists perfect drug-enhancing pills, DC polarization, and TMS gadgets, stroke victims, people with dementia, and even healthy college students wanting an edge for their final exams, will reap benefits from technological research. And these gifts may come sooner than we think.

Dr. Leonardo L. Leonidas (nonieleonidas68@ gmail.com) retired in 2008 as assistant clinical professor in pediatrics from Boston’s Tufts University School of Medicine, where he was recognized with a Distinguished Career Teaching Award in 2009. He is a 1968 graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine and now spends some of his time in the province of Aklan.