UMass Amherst Neuroscience and Behavior Seminar

In my third year of grad school, I was asked to give the weekly NSB seminar talk. I used this opportunity to describe the findings from my control experiments and debunk the myth that pharmaceuticals like Strattera enhance your brain power. At least for my rats who weren’t exhibiting signs of inattention or hyperactivity before taking this drug, it actually made them less focused on the decision-making task at hand! That means that taking something like this before a test at school or a big day at work could decrease your performance. Of course, for some individuals, these drugs are incredibly helpful. A few explanations for that effect include that those individuals who see an improvement in their performance after taking Strattera could be benefiting from the very real placebo effect or may be undiagnosed with ADHD. My data can be found below: