From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Dec 15 1999 - 08:06:25 MST
James Rogers <jamesr@best.com> writes:
> On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, Octavio Rojas Diaz wrote:
> >
> > well to change the topic I think that love pills already exists (MDMA
> > and it's analogues) unfortunately it has some side effects, and it's
> > believed that chronic use can lead to neuronal damage although no
> > conclusive data has been show of it's neurotoxicity on humans,
> > unfortunately these kind of drugs are ilegal and research is prohibited,
> > but fortunately MDMA and analogues action is similar to some serotonin
> > affecting antidepressants, and I hope further research leaves to safer
> > and more effective drugs.
>
> I am not a doctor, nor an expert on the subject, but I do have a couple
> friends that have used MDMA extensively. There is one apparent
> side-effect that is common to them that may or may not be from heavy MDMA
> usage, although it is not readily obvious unless you interact with them
> regularly.
>
> They have extremely poor short-term memory, much worse than I have ever
> seen in a normal person.
MDMA produces long-term depletion of serotonin, and while it is harder
to detect in human brains (for simple ethical reasons; it is hard to
get people to volunteer to being drugged and having their brains
dissected :-) there seem to be better and better evidence for it:
Psychopharmacology (Berl) 1999 Nov 5;147(1):56-65
Altered neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to
m-chlorophenylpiperazine in 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)
users.
McCann UD, Eligulashvili V, Mertl M, Murphy DL, Ricaurte GA
Biological Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health,
Bethesda, MD 20892-1272, USA
Rationale: (+/-) 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "Ecstasy")
is a popular drug of abuse and a brain serotonin neurotoxin in
animals. Growing evidence indicates that humans are also susceptible
to MDMA's neurotoxic effects, although few functional consequences of
MDMA-induced 5-HT damage have been identified. Objective: The present
study sought to determine whether possible differences between MDMA
users and control subjects could be unmasked by utilizing a
pharmacological challenge with the mixed 5-HT agonist,
meta-chlorophenylpiperazine (m-CPP). It was postulated that 5-HT
neurotoxicity in MDMA users would be associated with altered 5-HT
responsivity, exemplified by altered physiological and behavioral
responses to m-CPP. Methods: Twenty-five MDMA users who had not taken
MDMA for at least 3 weeks and 25 controls received intravenous placebo
(normal saline) and m-CPP (0.08 mg/kg) in a fixed order, single blind
design. Repeated measures of mood, physical symptoms, and blood
samples for neuroendocrine analyses were collected during the 90 min
after each infusion. Results: MDMA users reported more positive and
fewer negative emotions and physical symptoms following m-CPP than
controls, and were significantly less likely to report an
m-CPP-induced panic attack. Male MDMA users had diminished cortisol
and prolactin responses to m-CPP. Conclusions: The present data
indicate that MDMA users have alterations in 5-HT neuronal function,
possibly as a consequence of MDMA-induced brain serotonin neural
injury.
The short-term memory impairment seems to be supported too:
Psychopharmacology (Berl) 1999 Apr;143(4):417-25
Cognitive performance in (+/-) 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine
(MDMA, "ecstasy") users: a controlled study.
McCann UD, Mertl M, Eligulashvili V, Ricaurte GA
Unit on Anxiety, Biological Psychiatry Branch, NIMH, Bethesda, MD
20892-1272, USA. umccann@helix.nih.gov
RATIONALE: (+/-) 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "ecstasy")
is an amphetamine analog and drug of abuse. In animals, MDMA damages
brain serotonin (5-HT) neurons at doses that overlap with those used
recreationally by some humans. To date, few functional sequelae of
MDMA-induced 5-HT damage have been identified. OBJECTIVE: Since
serotonin is thought to be involved in cognitive processes, and since
previous studies have reported verbal and visual memory deficits in
MDMA users, the present study sought to determine whether other
cognitive processes are influenced by previous exposure to
MDMA. METHODS: Twenty-two MDMA users who had not used MDMA for at
least 3 weeks and 23 control subjects were tested repeatedly with a
computerized cognitive performance assessment battery while
participating in a 5-day controlled inpatient study. Cerebrospinal
fluid (CSF) measures of monoamine metabolites were also collected as
an index of brain monoaminergic function. RESULTS: MDMA users and
controls were found to perform similarly on several cognitive
tasks. However, MDMA subjects had significant performance deficits on
a sustained attention task requiring arithmetic calculations, a task
requiring complex attention and incidental learning, a task requiring
short term memory and a task of semantic recognition and verbal
reasoning. MDMA users also had significant selective decreases in CSF
5-HIAA. CONCLUSIONS: The present CSF data provide further evidence
that MDMA is neurotoxic to brain 5-HT neurons in humans, and the
behavioral data suggest that brain 5-HT injury is associated with
subtle, but significant, cognitive deficits.
Psychopharmacology (Berl) 1999 Jan;141(1):30-6
Memory deficits associated with recreational use of "ecstasy" (MDMA).
Morgan MJ
Centre for Substance Abuse Research, Department of Psychology, University of Wales Swansea, UK. m.j.morgan@swansea.ac.uk
Evidence from both animal, and human, studies suggests that repeated
administration of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA: "ecstasy")
produces lasting decreases in serotonergic activity. Serotonin is
believed to play a modulatory role in a variety of psychological
processes, including learning and memory. There are recent reports
that polydrug users, who have used ecstasy recreationally, exhibit
selective impairments in memory. However, these studies did not
compare ecstasy users with polydrug users who had not taken ecstasy,
leaving open the possibility that the memory deficits may be
associated with a history of use of other illicit drugs. The present
study used the Rivermead Behavioural Memory test to investigate
immediate and delayed recall in: 25 polydrug-users who had taken more
than 20 tablets of ecstasy (MDMA group), 22 participants (polydrug
controls) who had never taken ecstasy, but, otherwise has personal
characteristics (e.g. age, gender, education, height, weight), and
illicit drug use histories, that were generally not significantly
different from those of the MDMA group, and 19 participants who had
not used illicit drugs but who also had similar personal
characteristics (non-drug controls). Participants in the MDMA group
recalled significantly fewer ideas (approximately 75% of the number of
ideas recalled by participants in either of the other two groups), in
both immediate and delayed recall conditions. The two illicit
drug-using groups did differ in their estimated IQ scores and their
duration of use of LSD, but only the latter proved to be a
statistically significant covariate, and the difference in recall
performance between the MDMA and polydrug controls groups remained
statistically significant when this variable was treated as a
covariate. The present findings provide the first evidence that
deficits in memory performance in recreational ecstasy users are
primarily associated with past exposure to ecstasy, rather than with
the other legal and illicit drugs consumed by these individuals, and
are consistent with reduced serotonergic modulation of mnemonic
function as a result of long-term neurotoxic effects of MDMA in
humans.
(Psychopharmacology is a fun journal, although I mostly read it for
the cognitive enhancer papers)
> But as I said, I am no expert on the subject; I am just reporting what
> I and others have noticed. By "poor" short-term memory, I mean that I
> could spend an hour helping them go over some subject matter, and the next
> day they would not remember that they had even talked to me about it.
> Long-term memory seems fine, though.
Sounds like they have problems with their hippocampi; what you
described sounds very much like weak anterograde amnesia.
Overall, drugs that affect the monoaminergic modulator systems for a
long time are not very nice.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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