Posted by Quintal on June 12, 2007, at 19:57:25
In reply to Meds to improve memory?, posted by malcolm664 on June 12, 2007, at 17:47:40
When we're anxious in social situations often our attention is distracted away from the person we're speaking with and onto ourselves, because we're concentrating more on how the other person is making us feel rather than on what they're actually saying. So less information is taken in at the time anyway. Sorry to seem like a vulture on the benzo issue, but they're notorious for causing amnesia and they're clinically proven to impair encoding of short-term memory into long-term memory. When did your NVLD start? Unfortunately it's very likely the benzos you're taking are exacerbating the problem.
You asked about drugs that improve learning and memory. Such drugs do exist but at present they're only experimental at present. The experimental drug Ro15-4513 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro15-4513) is a partial inverse agonist of the GABA-A receptor and is effective as specific aid to learning and memory. This is bad news for people taking benzos because Ro15-4513 is related to flumazenil, the benzodiazepine receptor antagonist, and unfortunately it reverses their anxiolytic effect. There are other herbs and supplements that claim to be effective aids to learning and memory such as Ginkgo Biloba, Ginseng, Hydergine, and other nootropics like the racetams (piracetam, aniracetam etc). All of them are cerebral vasodilators and work by improving blood flow to the brain, which improves the overall functioning of that organ. Some are said to have additional mechanisms through which they produce their cognitive enhancing effects but I'm not familiar with what they are.
Q
poster:Quintal
thread:762718
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070604/msgs/762758.html