Limitless

In the film Limitless(circa 2011) a lonely and depressed writer stumbles upon a drug that vastly increases his mental faculties by sending the brain into overdrive. The drug, know as NZT-48 allowed the user to access parts of the brain that are normally subdued.

Today science has found that a common diabetes drug, Metformin, encourages the growth of neurons in the brain. According to this Science Daily article the drug has produced increased intelligence in mice and has shown promise in alleviating the symptoms in Alzheimer's patients.

ScienceDaily (July 5, 2012) — The widely used diabetes drug metformin comes with a rather unexpected and alluring side effect: it encourages the growth of new neurons in the brain. The study reported in the July 6th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, also finds that those neural effects of the drug also make mice smarter.

A refined version of the ingredients in this drug that encourages neuron generation could potentially lead to a breakthrough very similar to what we see in the movie Limitless:



Could an NZT-48 be in our near future? I think so.

Very, very interesting find, vxn.

Of course, as the film goes, I would have to imagine so would real life. A pill like that would be the doorway. Access to those parts of the brain would allow us to then get off said pill, because at the higher level our brain would understand how to access those parts without it.

reply to post by captaintyinknots


That could be. But It is also possible that like any drug, the brain would become dependent on it to function at those levels. And without it the brain could either force withdrawal effects in the person, or simply shut down and kill the user.

Dont know if i would like to pop this pill if it was about, you are who you are

reply to post by captaintyinknots


I need me some diabetes!! Lets all get FAT and smart!

Who's coming with me?????!!!!

Good find! Thanks for posting.

Metformin is one of the two diabetes drugs prescribed to me. I take it 3 times a day to offset steroids used in my lower back. It may have some merit as to a thought enhancement. There was some talk of it being an age extender, also.

reply to post by projectvxn


Metformin

It appears to be only for Type 2 diabetes, and is dangerous when prescribed with heart problems or heart medications.

It doesn't describe the mechanism that causes the drug to be effective for diabetes, but I am guessing that it dilates blood vessels and compliments insulin production. There are lots of meds that can do those two things, and increased blood flow to the brain can always lead to new synapses.

Bodybuilders have been taking stuff like NO2, Insulin, IGF-1, and of course lots of illegal hormones, and anything that creates bigger muscles, or better pumps has the potential to also foster new synapses in the brain.

Interesting find, Limitless was one of better movies recently.

Of course, we all need that clear pill.

S+F for good find.

ps. Note to my self - don't play chess with people who have diabetes...

reply to post by getreadyalready


This may be the case. But there are plenty of drugs that dilate blood vessels. None have been reported to have such dramatic effects on neuron generation. Of course this will require further study, but I believe isolating the mechanism that encourages such dramatic neuron growth is where this will go.

Drugs that increase blood flow to muscles are an entirely different thing and seem to have very drastic side effects unlike what has been shown by Metformin.

Could an NZT-48 be in our near future? I think so.

I think not.

If a drug exists, or comes to exist that can actually do similar to NZT-48, hearing about it is most likely going to be the extent of it. It will quietly fade away. The last thing any government wants is a public that you can't deceive readily and easily.
The best we can hope for is a dumbed down(pun intended) version of the drug that may indeed help Alzheimers victims.
I remember when pemoline magnesium was all the rage in the 70's. It was going to be the new memory wonder drug. Instead it quietly disappeared, and was made illegal.

Don't hold your breath OP. S&F

Great find projectvxn. I'm guessing that with a substance that can increase neuron growth, in order to reap the rewards we will have to continue to study in the conventional manner of books, lectures etc...

More time in the library ahead for humanity then

reply to post by Klassified

I think you give government too much credit. Of course, this is ATS. Government is all knowing and all powerful here.

reply to post by projectvxn

Drugs that increase blood flow to muscles are an entirely different thing and seem to have very drastic side effects unlike what has been shown by Metformin

I'm looking at it oppositely from you I think? Metformin is only prescribed limitedly, because of the deadly heart side-effects. While some of the hormones have long-term side-effects, none of them seem as immediately dangerous as metformin.

I'd love to find out there is a pill or something to improve our mental capacity. I'm not knocking it on purpose, but the fact that it is a diabetes drug makes me think it works along principles we have known about for a long time.

When I used to be into bodybuilding, we did some things that made me feel a lot smarter. The ECA stack gives a person tons of energy, focus, and concentration. We used to inject insulin, along with drinking creatine and l-arginine, even before the NO2 research was done, bodybuilders already knew about the "pump" from taking certain amino acids.

I'm not an expert on brains, but I would guess that creating synapses in the brain is a combination of mental stimulation, and increased blood flow and oxygen. It makes sense that diabetes drugs might be beneficial along with other things. Perhaps we are not too far away from a pill that will do wonders.

reply to post by getreadyalready


Indeed. I don't disagree with that. I'm just saying that if the effect could be isolated and refined to act on it's own, these dramatic results could be made even more acute. Being a diabetes drug it would certainly have well known side effects like damage to the heart or agitation of already present heart conditions.

Smart drugs (nootrpics) have been around since the 1960's.

There's the racetam family : Piracetam · Aniracetam · Oxiracetam · Pramiracetam · Phenylpiracetam.

Acetylcholine precursors like Alpha-GPC , choline bitartrate and lecithin.

And just lately there has been a lot of press about the drug Modafinil.

Most of these you can buy from Amazon or health supplement websites.

reply to post by PhoenixOD


Sure, but with such highly measurable results?

I'm not so sure. I'm looking forward to a day when the results go off the charts.

Originally posted by projectvxn
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

Sure, but with such highly measurable results?

I'm not so sure. I'm looking forward to a day when the results go off the charts.

I don't know about a pill, but there is a good chance we will see "the singularity" within our lifetime. Imagine all the knowledge of google in your brain just by thinking about it. The more and more integrated we get with our phones and electronic devices, the closer we get. The knowledge of mankind used to double ever few thousand years, and then every few hundred, and then it started doubling every few decades and at some point soon, our knowledge will double moment by moment, every thing we knew just a moment ago will only be half of what we know the next moment, until knowledge is literally infinite. Some speculate we will approach that point between 2020 and 2030, definitely within our lifetimes.

Originally posted by Klassified
The last thing any government wants is a public that you can't deceive readily and easily.

Exactly my thoughts. Anything that expands a person's potential will be on the chopping block. Which is why they ban all bodybuilding supplements that actually work, and ban things like '___' which expand the mind. Of course, the one drug that slows down the mind and makes you retarded, is the one they're on the verge of legalizing.

Just something to add:

en.wikipedia.org...

The 10% of brain myth is the widely perpetuated urban legend that most or all humans only make use of 20%, 10% or some other small percentage of their brains. It has been misattributed to people including Albert Einstein. By association, it is suggested that a person may harness this unused potential and increase intelligence.

Though factors of intelligence can increase with training, the popular notion that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be "activated", rests more in popular folklore than scientific theory. Though mysteries regarding brain function remain -- e.g. memory, consciousness and most paradoxical of all the fact that the tool we must use to comprehend the brain is the brain itself -- the physiology of brain mapping suggests that most if not all areas of the brain have a function.

reply to post by SilentKoala


Exactly... i would want to use 100% of my brain at once.... id be emptying my bowels, tasting every flavor of icecream, and feel like im burning alive while suffocating.