A new study reveals that certain drugs may make you smarter than we thought

By Kevin Loria

It’s both appealing and disturbing to think that taking a pill could boost someone’s brainpower to make them “smarter.”

Films like “Limitless” and “Lucy” create fantasies of cognition-enhancing drugs that practically provide superpowers. In the real world, college students and finance workers have been known to cram while hopped up on medications like Adderall and Ritalin, pharmaceuticals normally used to treat attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

But data has historically been mixed when researchers investigated the impact of those drugs on mental capacity. Some studies have found so-called “smart drugs” to have cognitive benefits, but others have shown they don’t make a difference for many people, especially those of average or above-average intelligence.

A new study that tested the effects of various cognitive enhancers on chess players might help clear up that mystery. Findings show that the drugs modafinil (commonly known as Provigil) and methyphenidate (frequently known as Ritalin or Concerta) can both improve the performance of chess players — those studied were better at performing the mental calculations needed to play chess after taking the drugs. However the study also revealed some of the limitations of these effects, since the drugs’ enhancement came at a cost to time management, especially for players who already struggled to play quickly.

Better, but slower, chess players