Trial reportNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2013
Working memory capacity predicts effects of methylphenidate on reversal learning.
Trial report in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers.
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
44 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Methylphenidate (Ritalin) does not improve exam performance in an experimental setting.Psychopharmacology · 2026Trial
- Methamphetamine-induced adaptation of learning rate dynamics depend on baseline performance.eLife · 2025Trial
- The Ability to Voluntarily Regulate Theta Band Activity Affects How Pharmacological Manipulation of the Catecholaminergic System Impacts Cognitive Control.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- Effects of methylphenidate on reinforcement learning depend on working memory capacity.Psychopharmacology · 2021Trial
- Catecholaminergic Modulation of Semantic Processing in Sentence Comprehension.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2020Trial
- A Neurofunctional Domains Approach to Evaluate D1/D5 Dopamine Receptor Partial Agonism on Cognition and Motivation in Healthy Volunteers With Low Working Memory Capacity.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Activation of D1 receptors affects human reactivity and flexibility to valued cues.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Catecholaminergic modulation of the cost of cognitive control in healthy older adults.PloS one · 2020Trial
- Catecholaminergic modulation of trust decisions.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Acute effects of lisdexamfetamine and D-amphetamine on social cognition and cognitive performance in a placebo-controlled study in healthy subjects.Psychopharmacology · 2018Trial
- Methylphenidate during early consolidation affects long-term associative memory retrieval depending on baseline catecholamines.Psychopharmacology · 2017Trial
- Abnormal response to methylphenidate across multiple fMRI procedures in cocaine use disorder: feasibility study.Psychopharmacology · 2016Trial
- Predicting beneficial effects of atomoxetine and citalopram on response inhibition in Parkinson's disease with clinical and neuroimaging measures.Human brain mapping · 2016Trial
- Methylphenidate alters selective attention by amplifying salience.Psychopharmacology · 2015Trial
- Alzheimer's Disease Pathologies Affect Dopaminergic Neural Mechanisms of Memory.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Concomitant activation of DResearch square · 2026Article
- Concomitant activation of DDiscover pharmaceutical sciences · 2026Article
- Striatal dopamine can enhance both fast working memory, and slow reinforcement learning, while reducing implicit effort cost sensitivity.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Categorical and dimensional aspects of stimulant medication effects in adult patients with ADHD and healthy controls.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2024Article
- Experimental Medicine Approaches in Early-Phase CNS Drug Development.Advances in neurobiology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Increased use of stimulant medication, such as methylphenidate, by healthy college students has raised questions about its cognitive-enhancing effects. Methylphenidate acts by increasing extracellular catecholamine levels and is generally accepted to remediate cognitive and reward deficits in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. However, the cognitive-enhancing effects of such 'smart drugs' in the healthy population are still unclear. Here, we investigated effects of methylphenidate (Ritalin, 20 mg) on reward and punishment learning in healthy students (N=19) in a within-subject, double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over design. Results revealed that methylphenidate effects varied both as a function of task demands and as a function of baseline working memory capacity. Specifically, methylphenidate improved reward vs punishment learning in high-working memory subjects, whereas it impaired reward vs punishment learning in low-working memory subjects. These results contribute to our understanding of individual differences in the cognitive-enhancing effects of methylphenidate in the healthy population. Moreover, they highlight the importance of taking into account both inter- and intra-individual differences in dopaminergic drug research.
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.