Working harder, not smarter

If you take Adderall or Ritalin and you don’t have ADHD, you might be hurting your cognitive performance. So found a study out of Australia’s University of Melbourne.

It seems that taking a stimulant when you don’t need one does make you try to work harder — hello, dopamine — but “[W]e discovered that this exertion caused more erratic thinking” and didn’t increase performance.

“Our research shows drugs that are expected to improve cognitive performance in patients may actually be leading to healthy users working harder while producing a lower quality of work in a longer amount of time.”

Don’t do this, but here’s how

MIT researchers are warning that AI can be used to create new, potentially pandemic viruses — and they give instructions for how to do it.

Giving non-science students some instructions and access to ChatGPT and other AI chatbots, the preprint’s author, one Kevin Esvelt, asked them to find a way to, essentially, start a new pandemic.

After only an hour, the class came up with lists of candidate viruses, companies that could help synthesize the pathogens’ genetic code, and contract research companies that might put the pieces together.

But don’t worry. Esvelter said he tested the process himself and “it wouldn’t come up with truly threatening suggestions” so obviously other people couldn’t either.

A better, plant-based insulin

The artificial insulin most diabetics take has a drawback — it’s missing one of the three peptides found in natural insulin. That means when it’s in pill form, it’s processed in the stomach … and processed quickly. That can lead to a see-saw^* effect on blood sugar as the insulin is absorbed too quickly.

But now dental researchers at UPenn have developed a way to add human insulin genes to lettuce, so the plant’s germline is altered to produce insulin— specifically proinsulin — that contains all three of the peptides found in the natural variety.

The resulting seeds permanently retained insulin genes, and subsequently grown lettuce was freeze dried, ground, and prepared for oral delivery following FDA regulatory guidelines.

The big advantage is that the extra peptide protects the insulin so it’s absorbed in the gut rather than the stomach. That means it’s a bit slower acting and “it works just like natural insulin, which minimizes the risk of hypoglycemia.”

^* Aka “teeter-totter” or “pendulum.” Pick your metaphor.

A laxative for brain function?

Many people with mood disorders also suffer from cognitive defects. Antidepressants target serotonin, but British researchers found that (not surprisingly) “resolving mood disturbances often does not resolve cognitive symptoms.”

Here’s the interesting bit: They found that taking low doses of prucalopride — yes, the laxative — saw patients’ cognitive symptoms reduced, and the improvement even showed up in brain scans.

Apparently prucalopride helps by adjusting the connectivity between specific brain regions, increasing some (those involved in information processing) and decreasing others (those “activated during mind wandering”).

You want the heavy science? Sure thing.

Participants who received the medication displayed more functional connectivity in their resting-state (rsFC) between major cognitive networks. This included more rsFC between the central executive network, a brain network used for processing thoughts, and the posterior and anterior cingulate cortex — brain areas that regulate information processing and attention in the brain.

Bottom line: It’s worth considering prucalopride “as a pro-cognitive treatment in disorders such as depression.”

Short Takes

Now semaglutide has a stigma

People who lose weight are saying that now there’s a stigma for using drugs to do it.

Wegovy and other drugs expose a social tension between a quest to medicate illness and a stigmatizing belief that obese people lack sufficient willpower to lose weight.

Choosing the booster

An FDA advisory panel has recommended that this year’s Covid-19 booster shot focus on a single variant — XBB. “If the F.D.A. agrees, the advice would start the manufacturing of millions of shots.”