ReviewBiological psychiatry2015
The cognition-enhancing effects of psychostimulants involve direct action in the prefrontal cortex.
Review in Biological psychiatry, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 83 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
83 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 166 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in India: a systematic review and a cross-sectional study among young adults in Delhi-NCR.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2025Pooled 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
- Acute Administration of 10 mg Methylphenidate on Cognitive Performance and Visual Scanning in Healthy Adults: Randomised, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study.Human psychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Cognitive enhancement: Effects of methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffeine on latent memory and resting state functional connectivity in healthy adults.Human brain mapping · 2022Trial
- Intrinsic connections between thalamic sub-regions and the lateral prefrontal cortex are differentially impacted by acute methylphenidate.Psychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Do Stimulants Promote Arrhythmic Risk: Insights From a Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocyte Model.Journal of arrhythmia · 2026Article
- Neurochemical and Circuit Heterogeneity of Cognition-Modulating Prefrontal Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Neurons.Biological psychiatry · 2026Article
- Guanfacine and HCN channels: bridging neuroinflammation and prefrontal cortex function in autism spectrum disorder.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2026Review
- Acute administration of methylphenidate modulates functional connectivity during irrelevant stimuli processing in Parkinson's disease.Clinical neurophysiology practice · 2026Article
- Multidimensional Evaluation of Lisdexamfetamine: Pharmacology, Therapeutic Use, Toxicity and Forensic Implications.Basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology · 2025Review
- Selective Visual Attention in ADHD: A Narrative Review.Current neurology and neuroscience reports · 2025Review
- Ginkgo Biloba as a niche theme cognitive enhancer agent, 1420 dokumen of Scopus database. A bibliometric study from 1988 to 2024.F1000Research · 2025Article
- Hepatocyte Growth Factor/MET Activator Rescues Working Memory Deficits after Repeated Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.Neurotrauma reports · 2025Article
- Examination of Changes in Levels of Empathy and Narcissistic Pathology After Treatment of Adult with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.Alpha psychiatry · 2024Article
- Cognition-enhancing and cognition-impairing doses of psychostimulants exert opposing actions on frontostriatal neural coding of delay in working memory.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Chronic exposure to inhaled vaporized cannabis high in ΔFrontiers in pharmacology · 2024Article
- The Atypical Dopamine Transporter Inhibitor CE-158 Enhances Dopamine Neurotransmission in the Prefrontal Cortex of Male Rats: A Behavioral, Electrophysiological, and Microdialysis Study.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Article
- Assessing Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency: Which Confounders? A Narrative Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2023Review
- Low-Affinity/High-Selectivity Dopamine Transport Inhibition Sufficient to Rescue Cognitive Functions in the Aging Rat.Biomolecules · 2023Article
- An overview on neurobiology and therapeutics of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Discover mental health · 2023Review
23 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
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Psychostimulants are highly effective in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The clinical efficacy of these drugs is strongly linked to their ability to improve cognition dependent on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and extended frontostriatal circuit. The procognitive actions of psychostimulants are only associated with low doses. Surprisingly, despite nearly 80 years of clinical use, the neurobiology of the procognitive actions of psychostimulants has only recently been systematically investigated. Findings from this research unambiguously demonstrate that the cognition-enhancing effects of psychostimulants involve the preferential elevation of catecholamines in the PFC and the subsequent activation of norepinephrine α2 and dopamine D1 receptors. In contrast, while the striatum is a critical participant in PFC-dependent cognition, where examined, psychostimulant action within the striatum is not sufficient to enhance cognition. At doses that moderately exceed the clinical range, psychostimulants appear to improve PFC-dependent attentional processes at the expense of other PFC-dependent processes (e.g., working memory, response inhibition). This differential modulation of PFC-dependent processes across dose appears to be associated with the differential involvement of noradrenergic α2 versus α1 receptors. Collectively, this evidence indicates that at low, clinically relevant doses, psychostimulants are devoid of the behavioral and neurochemical actions that define this class of drugs and instead act largely as cognitive enhancers (improving PFC-dependent function). This information has potentially important clinical implications as well as relevance for public health policy regarding the widespread clinical use of psychostimulants and for the development of novel pharmacologic treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other conditions associated with PFC dysregulation.
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.