Stimulant medications affect arousal and reward, not attention networks

12 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by e-khadem

4 Comments

evanjrowley

3 hours ago

>Stimulants reversed the behavioral and brain effects of sleeping less

Supporting this observation: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10....

I've been looking for theories for why 10mg Adderall seems to give me a brief feeling of drowsiness ~30 minutes after taking it.

The state regulation theory (§3) in this article might suggest that the process of returning to baseline could feel like sleepiness https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10....

Which makes more sense if the sleep disorder explanation for ADHD means that the normal feeling of sleepiness is not properly functioning.

deaux

4 hours ago

> validated the functional connectivity findings in a precision imaging drug trial with highly sampled (n = 5, 165–210 min each) healthy adults (methylphenidate 40 mg).

40 mg!? I'm hypersensitive to it, so my ideal dose is about 5-6mg of extended release. First time the doc prescribed 20mg and I took one I was full on jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding like an addict, felt incredibly anxious and just spent an all-around awful three hours. But even for the "normal" people, outside of the US where half the nation is on legalized meth, isn't 40mg considered a high dosage everywhere else in the world? I get that they want things to show up clearly on the scans, but still it seems like dosage here has the potential to impact what gets activated.

Honga

3 hours ago

While is was taking MPH I'd take 10mg three times a day (male, 76kg). The times I'd taken twice that amount would turn me into a face twisted gargoyle. 40mg would be unpleasant for sure.

I met a couple of doctors at a party once who would take 60mg recreationally each before going dancing. Seemed unreal.

cootsnuck

an hour ago

This does make sense given modern understandings of ADHD are that it's not about it being a deficit in attention but rather a deficit in self-regulation and executive functioning.