ArticleNeuroImage2011
Methylphenidate enhances brain activation and deactivation responses to visual attention and working memory tasks in healthy controls.
Article in NeuroImage, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 86 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
86 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 145 citations in OpenAlex.
- Quantifying the inverted U: A meta-analysis of prefrontal dopamine, D1 receptors, and working memory.Behavioral neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- From rest to focus: pharmacological modulation of the relationship between resting state dorsal attention network dynamics and task-based brain activation.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Trial
- Methylphenidate reorganizes cortical hierarchy through dopaminergic modulation.Nature communications · 2025Trial
- Catecholaminergic Modulation of Large-Scale Network Dynamics Is Tied to the Reconfiguration of Corticostriatal Connectivity.Human brain mapping · 2024Trial
- Methylphenidate Enhances Spontaneous Fluctuations in Reward and Cognitive Control Networks in Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2023Trial
- Methylphenidate modulates interactions of anxiety with cognition.Translational psychiatry · 2021Trial
- Catecholaminergic Modulation of Semantic Processing in Sentence Comprehension.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2020Trial
- Abnormal response to methylphenidate across multiple fMRI procedures in cocaine use disorder: feasibility study.Psychopharmacology · 2016Trial
- Waiting Impulsivity: The Influence of Acute Methylphenidate and Feedback.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2015Trial
- Differential impact of methylphenidate and atomoxetine on sustained attention in youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2015Trial
- The effects of methylphenidate on whole brain intrinsic functional connectivity.Human brain mapping · 2014Trial
- Distributed effects of methylphenidate on the network structure of the resting brain: a connectomic pattern classification analysis.NeuroImage · 2013Trial
- Trial
- Effects of methylphenidate on resting-state functional connectivity of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine pathways in cocaine addiction.JAMA psychiatry · 2013Trial
- Methylphenidate (MPH) promotes visual cortical activation in healthy adults in a cued visuomotor task.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2012Trial
- Common and unique therapeutic mechanisms of stimulant and nonstimulant treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Archives of general psychiatry · 2012Trial
- Methylphenidate modulates sustained attention and cortical activation in survivors of traumatic brain injury: a perfusion fMRI study.Psychopharmacology · 2012Trial
- EEG-based network dynamics in cannabis and polydrug use: a directed transfer function approach.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Blunted modulation of hierarchical brain organization in opioid use disorder.Research square · 2026Article
- Acute administration of methylphenidate modulates functional connectivity during irrelevant stimuli processing in Parkinson's disease.Clinical neurophysiology practice · 2026Article
26 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Methylphenidate (MPH) is a stimulant drug that amplifies dopamineric and noradrenergic signaling in the brain, which is believed to underlie its cognition enhancing effects. However, the neurobiological effects by which MPH improves cognition are still poorly understood. Here, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used together with working memory (WM) and visual attention (VA) tasks to test the hypothesis that 20mg oral MPH would increase activation in the dorsal attention network (DAN) and deactivation in the default mode network (DMN) as well as improve performance during cognitive tasks in healthy men. The group of subjects that received MPH (MPH group; N=16) had higher activation than the group of subjects who received no medication (control group: N=16) in DAN regions (parietal and prefrontal cortex, regions increasingly activated with increased cognitive load) and had increased deactivation in the insula and posterior cingulate cortex (regions increasingly deactivated with increased cognitive load) and these effects did not differ for the VA and the WM tasks. These findings provide the first evidence that MPH enhances activation of the DAN whereas it alters DMN deactivation. This suggests that MPH (presumably by amplifying dopamine and noradrenergic signaling) modulates cognition in part through its effects on DAN and DMN.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.