MDMA and Cognition
...to MDMA. Heavy users of the drug may come close to taking an equivalent dosage to what was given to the non-human primates in the studies, but recreational users don’t come close to that amount. Unfortunately, it is unclear as to what the extent of damage is caused by the neurotoxicity of the drug on a long-term basis, even if it is taken in small doses. Recently, the effect of MDMA on cognitive skills has been examined. Although scientists are still not sure what part serotonin plays in cognitive tasks. Scientists in recent studies have been able to try to assess the damage done to users by correlating the scores of tests administered to ecstasy users willing to submit themselves to the cognitive testing. In Germany there was an experiment on the correlation between congnitive performance and recreational ecstasy use conducted by Euphosyne Gouzoulis-Mayfrank, Jörg Daumann, Frank Tuchtenhagen, Susanne Pelz, Steffanie Becker, Hans-Jürgen Kunert, Bruno Fimm, and Henning Sass. There were three sample groups: ecstasy and cannabis users, cannabis users, and non-drug users. The groups consisted of students involved in the study and those that found out and volunteered due to word of mouth. Since most ecstasy users also are users of cannabis, it wasn’t possible to create a large enough group of just ecstasy users. Therefore, two control groups were created, one consisting of 28 drug-free students and one consisting of 28 students who only used cannabis and never tried ecstasy. The frequency of cannabis use in the cannabis using control group was matched to that of the ecstasy users. The ecstasy and cannabis group also consisted of 28 students. Age, sex, and education were matched in the groups. The groups were administered a series of tests assessing their alertness, selective visual attention, divided attention, intermodal integration, visual scanning, cognitive interference, memory span and working memory, digital span, and memory and learning. Reaction times, errors, anticipations, and performance scores were analyzed in an ANOVA and then post-hoc tests were conducted. Differences in reaction time for all three groups were insignificant. Overall, cognitive operations for all three groups were fairly good, however in tests of visual attention the ecstasy users had a greater range of variation than the other two ...