Could Modafinil Really Be a Non-Addictive Stimulant?
Nora D. Volkow of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and her team at Brookhaven National Laboratory decided to take a closer look at the increasingly used “smart” drug’s path of action. They ran a study with 10 adult male subjects. Some of the subjects were given a placebo and the others were administered either 200 mg or 400 mg doses (typical therapeutic doses) of Modafinil. The researchers then ran PET scans on all subjects, comparing the levels of extracellular dopamine between them. The researchers found that Modafinil caused an increase in dopamine levels in extracellular space, increasing dopamine levels by blocking the transporters that would normally remove and clean up this extracellular dopamine. Significantly, extracellular dopamine levels increased in all areas of the brain, including the nucleus accumbens. Since the dopamine transporters remove and recycle released dopamine from the spaces between brain cells, blocking the activity of these tran
