Drugs and learning - the talk on the street

I'm lazy. I admit it. And I'm always looking for shortcuts to learning, so that I can jam more and more into my inchinn every day. Research on two drugs that might help caught my eye this week. I partake of the second in quantity. But I'll hold off on the first until available in vending machines. So...

First valproic acid, a medication that's use to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder, is being hailed the next new learning drug (whatever happened to Ritalin?). A study led by Takao Hensch, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, had people perform online tasks to train their ears to identify different tones. Absolute pitch (perfect pitch) is the ability to identify any musical note at will and is a rare phenomenon. Those who received the valproic acid scored significantly higher on this difficult learning task, which appears to reawaken part of their brains. Let's say Hensch made them sing!

o-OH I just learned something...
Nah, it's just my anticonvulsant - vaproic acid!

The other drug is more mundane - coffee. Most of use take it as a habit without realising it's probably helping us stay afloat - and in more ways than one. Research has recently demonstrated that it actually does help us learn. The caffeine equivalent of one strong cup of coffee boosts a deeper level of long-term memory, if consumed after learning something. I note however that the participants were not "habitual consumers of caffeine". These people EXIST?