In the psychedelic sixties, Jefferson Airplane wrote dreamily about a wonderland where "one pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small." Between Viagra and Meridia, we may already be there. So is it too crazy to hope one pill could make you smarter? Perhaps not.

Scientists (and an increasing number of college students) are finding certain medications may indeed improve cognitive function. In particular, drugs used for treating Alzheimer's disease, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or narcolepsy may help keep your brain "erect" for a lot longer than four hours.

An Upper By Any Other Name...
In the old days, they called it Speed, but now a new type of amphetamine is finding favor with those looking to improve their SAT scores or ace their finals. Ritalin and Adderall used to treat ADD, along with Provigil, which treats the day-time sleepiness of narcolepsy, are being used by an increasing percentage of students across the country. In healthy people without disorders, these drugs variously aid concentration, alertness, focus, short-term memory and wakefulness -- useful qualities when you're working on complex term papers and pulling all-nighters before exams or job deadlines.

A study published in the international biomedical and psychosocial journal, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, using 2002 data noted that even then, more than 7 million Americans used bootleg prescription stimulants, and 1.6 million of those users were of student age. Nowadays, by the time students reach college age, they probably know about these drugs already, and how to get them, with or without a prescription.

These drugs may not be used only as smart pills. Because of the appetite-suppressing properties of amphetamines, they are also helpful for weight loss. And if you were out for a bender the night before? A little Adderall might keep you alert despite that brain-crushing hangover.

Of course, the use of stimulants is nothing new - humans have long been "enjoying" the effects of coffee, nicotine and coca leaves for hundreds, if not thousands of years. But other substances might provide even more tantalizing benefits.

The Sharpest Tool In The Shed
Several new medications on the market or in development to halt or lessen the effects of Alzheimer's disease could have other interesting applications. After all, if these medications can improve memory, why couldn't they help healthy people too? In theory, it's possible, according to Dr. Marvin Hausman, CEO of Axonyx Inc., a company whose Alzheimer's drug phenserine is undergoing clinical trials in Europe.

Phenserine, like Aricept and Exelon, work by increasing the level of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that is deficient in people with Alzheimer's. A neurotransmitter allows communication between nerve cells in the brain, and in people with the disease, many brain cells have died. The hope is to get the most out of the remaining cells by flooding the brain with acetylcholine.

There is no proof that an Alzheimer's drug could improve brain function in healthy people, although one study conducted by Stanford University researchers showed that a small group of middle-aged pilots given Aricept did better on flight simulation tests compared with those given a placebo.

Also in development is Memory Pharmaceuticals' experimental drug, MEM 1414, which works by blocking phosphodiesterase, an enzyme that breaks down an important brain chemical, cyclic AMP. It appears to work in the area of the brain where new memories are formed. "It's very important for facts and events," says Axel Unterbeck, PhD, president and chief scientific officer of Memory Pharmaceuticals.

"In order to be able to form new long-term memories -- which are memories lasting for more than three hours, by definition ... the [brain] also processes that information for facts and events to be stored long term, he says. "If you enhance this pathway, you get, potentially, enhancement of this very function." Will it work for Calculus students?

Who knows?

Finally, a new class of experimental drugs called ampakines could boost glutamate activity and flood the brain with the neurotransmitter that makes learning and remembering easy.

According to New Scientist today, a small study of an ampakine called CX717 at the University of Surrey showed the drug improved the performance of sleep-deprived volunteers. The more ampakine they took, the more their cognitive performance improved, and the longer their alertness lasted. And none of them suffered any of the jitters associated with caffeine or amphetamines. But it will be some time before ampakines will make it to your local Walgreens.

Who you callin' smart?
But does the fact that you can stay up late and memorize facts make you smart anyway? Do SAT scores and grade-point averages measure all of what it means to be intelligent? What about creativity, strategy or interpersonal skills?

According to Howard Gardner, author of "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences," "I feel that what we call 'intelligence' is almost always 'scholastic skill' -- what it takes to do well on a certain kind of short-answer instrument in a certain kind of Western school. Other uses of intellect -- musical competence, facility in the use of one's hands, understanding of other people, sensitivity to distinctions in the natural world, alertness to one's own and others' emotional states etc. -- are not included in our definitions of intelligence, though I think that they should be."

Pills cannot impart wisdom or make everyone capable of brilliant leaps of imagination. But they may someday help you remember where you left your keys, or retain cherished memories before the ravages of age take their toll. But what if there are things you really wish you could forget?

Wipe the slate clean
According to Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, there is a period of time after you first learn something before it's retained. That period is called consolidation. Some research has shown that stress hormones, like adrenaline, make that process faster and more intense. The result is, if you're stressed when something happens, it's going to be burned into your memory quicker and deeper.

"That's why you remember what you were doing the morning of Sept. 11, better than August 11," Pitman says.
As a result, some scientists believe post-traumatic stress disorder occurs when too much adrenaline enters the brain at the moment the memory of a traumatic event is being consolidated, or stored, the first time.

But "the real hot topic," Pitman says, is not consolidation but reconsolidation, whereby an old memory is recalled and a second "window of opportunity" opens to allow the memory to be reset and altered with the help of drugs.
The drug propranolol was originally developed to treat high blood pressure, but its effect on the hormone adrenaline has made it popular among actors dealing with severe stage fright, and scientists are now using it in their research on memory.

In theory, someone who had experienced a traumatic event could undergo talking therapy to remember the event while taking propranolol. The drug would suppress the adrenaline, and the memory could be reconsolidated with less trauma associated.

Total Recall?
Reconsolidation remains a theory - and a controversial one at that. The President's Council on Bioethics has condemned memory-altering research. However, the National Institutes of Health has funded some experiments that use propranalol for post-traumatic stress disorder treatment, and Pitman said he has received a grant from the Army to begin conducting similar research with Iraq veterans.

But what are the consequences of altering a particular person's memory, without changing the context of the person's life? "We might erase a young girl's memory of a rape," says Felicia Cohn, a medical ethicist at University of California at Irvine's School of Medicine, "but people around her will still know and inadvertently remind her."
"It becomes a genie in the bottle question. Once a drug is available for use, it gets used appropriately and inappropriately. People could start going to physicians to forget they love chocolate. ? Is it just for post-traumatic stress disorder and rape victims? Where do we draw the line? Who gets to decide what is horrific enough?"

The deeper you delve into the frontier of brain research, the more it resembles science fiction, rather than science fact. And the current fact is, whether you want to remember, forget, or stay up all night, there is still no pill guaranteed to make you smarter than a fifth grader.