Viagra for the brain

[nitro]

This movie started it all

This article says it can be real

The Brain Bro
Forget Adderall. Forget Provigil. Eric Matzner says his nootropics will make your brain sharper in weeks.

John Cuneo

It was 7 p.m. on a Thursday, and Eric Matzner had gathered a group of bio-hackers and futurists in a bright room in San Francisco’s Mission District for an invite-only Meetup. The event promised to school them in “nootropics,” or cognitive-enhancement pills, like the ones he sells through his start-up, Nootroo.

Matzner’s pills come in “gold” and “silver” formulas, which are to be taken on alternating days. Over time, they’re intended to enhance focus, memory, and cognitive function. The pills are what he does for money, but it’s talks like these—the chance to evangelize about nootropics—that really fire him up.

“I’m basically going to cover how they came about and, like, a little bit of their properties,” said Matzner, launching his slide deck. The first slide featured a portrait of Corneliu E. Giurgea, a Romanian scientist regarded as the father of nootropics, and a quote from him: “Man will not wait passively for millions of years before evolution offers him a better brain.” With that, Matzner, who is 28, began rocketing through the history and science of nootropics at a pace typically heard only at debate tournaments...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/the-brain-bro/497546/

 

[IAS_LLC]

Amazing how much of this there is around now. Interesting marketing approch too: skirt by the fact there is no evidence it works by using waaaay too many words

 

[nitro]

I am wondering when people are going to be happy just with what they got. What is wonderful about our existence is that there are so many ways to appreciate reality. In fact, sometimes too much understanding confuses the appreciation of the thing you are appreciating. Do I really want to think of a woman from the perspective of Grays Anatomy? Or that she is probably a walking neural net optimizing the chances of her potential offspring? What about a rose both its smell and its color? Do I really want to break it down to the electromagnetic spectrum?

I have the opposite problem of most people. I often just want a stupid pill. We make terrible judgement on people. There is nothing, or should be nothing, more inherently more valuable about being smart than not being smart. It is just the way that natural selection works, and society has mirrored nature for millennia.

Money distorts everything.

 

[nitro]

Blind people use brain’s visual cortex to help do maths

Numbers game: vision isn’t necessary for counting skills
Willing-Holtz/Plainpicture

By Colin Barras

Subtract 8 from 52. Did you see the calculation in your head? While a leading theory suggests our visual experiences are linked to our understanding of numbers, a study of people who have been blind from birth suggests the opposite.

The link between vision and number processing is strong. Sighted people can estimate the number of people in a crowd just by looking, for instance, while children who can mentally rotate an object and correctly imagine how it might look from a different angle often develop better mathematical skills.

“It’s actually hard to think of a situation when you might process numbers through any modality other than vision,” says Shipra Kanjlia at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

But blind people can do maths too. To understand how they might compensate for their lack of visual experience, Kanjlia and her colleagues asked 36 volunteers – 17 of whom had been blind at birth – to do simple mental arithmetic inside an fMRI scanner. To level the playing field, the sighted participants wore blindfolds.

Innate ability
We know that a region of the brain called the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is, and brain scans revealed that the same area is similarly active in blind people too.

“It’s really surprising,” says Kanjlia. “It turns out brain activity is remarkably similar, at least in terms of classic number processing.”

This may mean we have a deep understanding of how to handle numbers that is entirely independent of visual experience. This suggests we are all born with a natural understanding of numbers – an idea many researchers find difficult to accept.

The idea that visual experience is important for numerical processing might generally be preferred because it’s easier to explain, says Kanjlia. “But that doesn’t mean that alternative theories aren’t true.”

Extra boost
That wasn’t the only surprise to emerge from the study. Kanjlia and her colleagues also discovered that the volunteers who had been blind since birth seemed to recruit an extra area of the brain to work on mental arithmetic problems....

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2106215-blind-people-use-brains-visual-cortex-to-help-do-maths/

 

[dealmaker]

Speaking of SF, Tim Ferriss said "its a relaxed culture, its hard to tell the difference between 20 something gazillionaire and 20 something unemployed person they dress very similarly".

 

[comagnum]

People taking this new smart drug report its like viewing the world in HD, clarity to perfection feeling, many say it makes music feel intense & and blissful. I once traded for years full time on drug called GHB that works on the same GABA receptor as this 'smart' drug' Matzner is using. I recognized some of the effects of this smart drug as sounding similar to GHB. Sorry for the long rant.

I used GHB in the late 90's, it was legal back than, you could buy it a GNC or many health food stores.. I was very healthy, drug free, non drinker, living on a great beach in Hawaii surfing most days. I was a disciplined full time day & swing trader. I gave into peer pressure and tried GHB that a fitness instructor friend talked me into trying. Every article I found about is stated it safe as water, the fountain of youth, etc. . Body builders used it before sleep to release more growth hormone and reach a deep sleep faster The smart drug users were also into GHB. It made you feel like you had the energy and optimism of a very young person, with the empathy of Gandhi, the creativity of Steve Jobs, and the brain of Einstein. Everybody that took it fell in love with it. I felt so creative on it and could focus like a laser trading and surf like a dolphin. I was killing it trading on a level I had never imagined. I credited GHB for that sharp increase in profits. My high rise condo in Hawaii was transformed into a non stop party - lava lamps, rave music thumping, people coming and going through the night to party. It suddenly became a schedule-1 drug and was removed from stores form a string of deaths. I had to buy it on-line and sometimes the supplier ran out. When I ran out I could no sleep, was nervous and felt a level of doom that I had never experienced before. I would stare out the window like a cat or dog for days waiting to see the UPS truck.
My life now depended on this drug. I could not trade or even go outside without this drug. About 2 years later it came crashing down - I was waking up in places far from home not remembering how I got there, passed out with people shaking me thinking I was dying. I had to sop but no local hospital would take me in. There was only one hospital that would take me in but it was on the mainland I was to sick to make it there. The GHB detox is done in an ICU with assisted breathing -and heart monitors -"safe as water"?. I had to do it on my own. I went to shrink and told him about my plan to detox, asking for some safe drugs to help me with this - he loaded me up with pills - and I mean lots of them: Ambian, Valium, Oxycontin, Wellbutrin, etc. Days 1-9 were horrible - I barricaded furniture to block me from getting to the balcony - because I was tempted to jump. My resting pulse was 180 on day #10 and climbing - I could hear my heart beating. I took hand fulls of pills but they did nothing to calm me down - that is until I passed out and came to days later about 20 pound lighter looking like a POW. It took many years to rebuild my life again - it was like waking in another person body and that person was a train wreck. Everything was a disaster. I had 3 cars but could not find any of them, my set for life at 37 trading account was down to $60K but I did not remember the trades that caused it. I would have to pay the IRS $180k in taxes for capital gains on profits I had made than lost. I learned all I could about GHB - about recovery. I became glad to be alive. It turns out many people died from GHB, plenty of body builders died from the detox, even when done at a hospital - heart failure. Ravers were replacing X with GHB, the deaths were sky rocketing. If you mix GHB with alcohol or sedatives its game over. I started all over again from min wage jobs to a good career than trading. Point being - there are no free lunches - when a drug feels like a miracle thats the warning flag - whatever it initially gives you it will take away ten times over down the road. I had read users of this new smart drug falling in love with it - calling it a miracle - look out below.

 

[vanzandt]

People taking this new smart drug report its like viewing the world in HD, clarity to perfection feeling, many say it makes music feel intense & and blissful. I once traded for years full time on drug called GHB that works on the same GABA receptor as this 'smart' drug' Matzner is using. I recognized some of the effects of this smart drug as sounding similar to GHB. Sorry for the long rant.

I used GHB in the late 90's, it was legal back than, you could buy it a GNC or many health food stores.. I was very healthy, drug free, non drinker, living on a great beach in Hawaii surfing most days. I was a disciplined full time day & swing trader. I gave into peer pressure and tried GHB that a fitness instructor friend talked me into trying. Every article I found about is stated it safe as water, the fountain of youth, etc. . Body builders used it before sleep to release more growth hormone and reach a deep sleep faster The smart drug users were also into GHB. It made you feel like you had the energy and optimism of a very young person, with the empathy of Gandhi, the creativity of Steve Jobs, and the brain of Einstein. Everybody that took it fell in love with it. I felt so creative on it and could focus like a laser trading and surf like a dolphin. I was killing it trading on a level I had never imagined. I credited GHB for that sharp increase in profits. My high rise condo in Hawaii was transformed into a non stop party - lava lamps, rave music thumping, people coming and going through the night to party. It suddenly became a schedule-1 drug and was removed from stores form a string of deaths. I had to buy it on-line and sometimes the supplier ran out. When I ran out I could no sleep, was nervous and felt a level of doom that I had never experienced before. I would stare out the window like a cat or dog for days waiting to see the UPS truck.
My life now depended on this drug. I could not trade or even go outside without this drug. About 2 years later it came crashing down - I was waking up in places far from home not remembering how I got there, passed out with people shaking me thinking I was dying. I had to sop but no local hospital would take me in. There was only one hospital that would take me in but it was on the mainland I was to sick to make it there. The GHB detox is done in an ICU with assisted breathing -and heart monitors -"safe as water"?. I had to do it on my own. I went to shrink and told him about my plan to detox, asking for some safe drugs to help me with this - he loaded me up with pills - and I mean lots of them: Ambian, Valium, Oxycontin, Wellbutrin, etc. Days 1-9 were horrible - I barricaded furniture to block me from getting to the balcony - because I was tempted to jump. My resting pulse was 180 on day #10 and climbing - I could hear my heart beating. I took hand fulls of pills but they did nothing to calm me down - that is until I passed out and came to days later about 20 pound lighter looking like a POW. It took many years to rebuild my life again - it was like waking in another person body and that person was a train wreck. Everything was a disaster. I had 3 cars but could not find any of them, my set for life at 37 trading account was down to $60K but I did not remember the trades that caused it. I would have to pay the IRS $180k in taxes for capital gains on profits I had made than lost. I learned all I could about GHB - about recovery. I became glad to be alive. It turns out many people died from GHB, plenty of body builders died from the detox, even when done at a hospital - heart failure. Ravers were replacing X with GHB, the deaths were sky rocketing. If you mix GHB with alcohol or sedatives its game over. I started all over again from min wage jobs to a good career than trading. Point being - there are no free lunches - when a drug feels like a miracle thats the warning flag - whatever it initially gives you it will take away ten times over down the road. I had read users of this new smart drug falling in love with it - calling it a miracle - look out below.

Thats a heck of a story. Wow.

 

[syswizard]

Thats a heck of a story. Wow.

It's an incredible story....and "Limitless" is one of my favorite all time movies. In fact, I have a date next Sunday nite to watch it on Amazon Firestick with my best GF....she's never seen it.

That being said, I am now taking "Food4Thought" by Helix....a natural memory enhancing formulation. It's not cheap and I take about 4 pills per day at a cost of $2.00....so $60 per month. You must be taking it at least 2 months before seeing any benefits.

 

[Pekelo]

so $60 per month. You must be taking it at least 2 months before seeing any benefits.

How much money are you getting for pushing it? So I should pay$60 just to figure it out if it works or not. Got it.

 

[DallasCowboysFan]

I have heard a lot about nootropics so I ordered some from Amazon. .... Neuro Clairty.
I took one pill a day but it didn't do a thing. I checked the ingredients and it only consisted of herbs and vitamins. The most revolutionary ingredient was ginkgo biloba and st john's wort. There is nothing new or special about those.

I don't doubt they work if you take the right ones though, but I'll never take anything abusive.