Back to Papers

Quantifying the Perceived and Measured Effects of Nootropics on Cognitive Performance

Uses self-tracking and online cognitive tests to compare subjective vs. objective effects of nootropics on memory, focus, and alertness.

status: Notes

Status Indicator

The status indicator reflects the current state of the work: - Abandoned: Work that has been discontinued - Notes: Initial collections of thoughts and references - Draft: Early structured version with a central thesis - In Progress: Well-developed work actively being refined - Finished: Completed work with no planned major changes This helps readers understand the maturity and completeness of the content.

·
certainty: experimental

Confidence Rating

The confidence tag expresses how well-supported the content is, or how likely its overall ideas are right. This uses a scale from "impossible" to "certain", based on the Kesselman List of Estimative Words: 1. "certain" 2. "highly likely" 3. "likely" 4. "possible" 5. "unlikely" 6. "highly unlikely" 7. "remote" 8. "impossible" Even ideas that seem unlikely may be worth exploring if their potential impact is significant enough.

·
importance: 8/10

Importance Rating

The importance rating distinguishes between trivial topics and those which might change your life. Using a scale from 0-10, content is ranked based on its potential impact on: - the reader - the intended audience - the world at large For example, topics about fundamental research or transformative technologies would rank 9-10, while personal reflections or minor experiments might rank 0-1.

Idea

Track your own (or volunteers’) sleep and nootropic use with a wearable device and daily log. Compare subjective energy, mood, and focus with objective results from small online or local cognitive tasks. Analyze if perception matches actual performance and how nootropics interact with sleep quality.

Sign in with GitHub to comment

Loading comments...
Citation
Yotam, Kris · Jul 2025

Yotam, Kris. (Jul 2025). Quantifying the Perceived and Measured Effects of Nootropics on Cognitive Performance. krisyotam.com. https://krisyotam.com/papers/science/nootropics-performance-study

@article{yotam2025nootropics-performance-study,
  title   = "Quantifying the Perceived and Measured Effects of Nootropics on Cognitive Performance",
  author  = "Yotam, Kris",
  journal = "krisyotam.com",
  year    = "2025",
  month   = "Jul",
  url     = "https://krisyotam.com/papers/science/nootropics-performance-study"
}
Quote of the moment
In general my approach to running arbitrary untrusted code is 20% sandboxing and 80% making sure that it’s an extremely low value attack target so it’s not worth trying to break in. Programs are terminated after 1 second of runtime, they run in a container with no network access, and the machine they’re running on has no sensitive data on it and a very small CPU.
Julia Evans (https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/05/25/new-playground--memory-spy/)
Kris Yotam
Kris Yotam
long-form stable essays
Updated
2026-05-12
Reading time
~14s

in Naperville, IL
Last visitor from Mitaka, Japan