Posted by cumulative on April 14, 2008, at 0:29:01
In reply to Re: Memantine May Prevent More Than Stimulant Tol, posted by undopaminergic on April 13, 2008, at 19:11:00
warning, pure theory ahead. :) apologies for the disorganization, again.
On the addforums, the poster trying memantine (I think it's temoigneur) mentioned that the only problematic side effect he was experiencing was a seeming drop in creativity.
This is interesting to me in the context of the mesolimbic dopamine system that we're looking at.
Given the effects you describe, albeit creativity being far more complex than all this, I would somewhat expect the opposite -- an improvement in, say, associative idea generation.
Sometimes an eventual "zombifying" effect from the psychostimulants is spoken of. Usually this occurs after the initial mood lift disappears. I have thought about exogenous stimulation of the frontal lobe possibly to some extent clamping down on mesolimbic dopamine function (apollonian-dionysian, eh?) -- hence the focus, but lack of spark and interest in life, and novel thinking, that may or may not appear.
Another mechanism might be the psychostimulants stimulating NMDA ---> desensitization of ventral tegmental dopamine.
So, what do you think, undopaminergic? What did memantine do for you in this respect, creativity?
Did you seem to suffer any cognitive impairment from the memantine? The "partial antagonism" that memantine provides may go a long way in avoiding such things.
poster:cumulative
thread:822260
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/neuro/20080204/msgs/823186.html