RECEPTOR BASED TARGET FOR NOOTROPICS AGENTS: A REVIEW

Abstract

Nootropics are drugs to treat cognition deficits, which are most commonly found in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Many such enhancers have been found, and their actions tend to involve interactions between Neurohumoral Signalling and responses and the Cholinergic system. Cognition is a suite of interrelated conscious (and unconscious) mental activities, including pre-attentional sensory gating, attention, learning and memory, problem solving, planning, reasoning and judgment, understanding, knowing and representing, creativity, intuition and insight, spontaneous thought, introspection, as well as mental time travel, self-awareness and meta cognition. Although there have been numerous studies of drug effects on learning and memory during the past several decades, research in this area has gained momentum only in the recent past after the biochemical and physiological basis of these processes have been understood. Many of the compounds influence learning by affecting the process involved in memory storage. Other compounds seem to affect performance by modifying attentional, perceptual or motivational processes.