Trial reportNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2023
Methylphenidate undermines or enhances divergent creativity depending on baseline dopamine synthesis capacity.
Trial report in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 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
5 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Catecholaminergic Modulation of Large-Scale Network Dynamics Is Tied to the Reconfiguration of Corticostriatal Connectivity.Human brain mapping · 2024Trial
- Current insights into the safety and adverse effects of methylphenidate in children, adolescents, and adults - narrative review.Pharmacological reports : PR · 2025Review
- Dopaminergic and Noradrenergic Contributions to Divergent and Convergent Creativity Task Performance, a Systematic Review.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Striatal dopamine can enhance both fast working memory, and slow reinforcement learning, while reducing implicit effort cost sensitivity.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Heart Rate Variability Prediction of Stimulant-Induced Creativity Gains in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
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 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Catecholamine-enhancing psychostimulants, such as methylphenidate have long been argued to undermine creative thinking. However, prior evidence for this is weak or contradictory, stemming from studies with small sample sizes that do not consider the well-established large variability in psychostimulant effects across different individuals and task demands. We aimed to definitively establish the link between psychostimulants and creative thinking by measuring effects of methylphenidate in 90 healthy participants on distinct creative tasks that measure convergent and divergent thinking, as a function of individuals' baseline dopamine synthesis capacity, indexed with
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.