Saturday, October 23, 2010

Sunday, October 17, 2010

COTININE

Whenever I attempt to classify the vague, quasi-tranparent, clarifying effects of piracetam -- the best comparison I can make is low dose nicotine. Although I was aware that piracetam and other members of the racetam family modulate the cholinergic system in a variety of ways (some through direct agonism of the nicotinic AChR) I had never considered any direct structural similarities between the classes.

Much of nicotine's pro-cognitive, nootropic, memory-enhancing properties are a product of its primary metabolite, cotinine. So I was amazed to find that cotinine shares the methylpyrrolidone nucleus of the racetam family. The nitrogen in piracetam's ethylamine side chain could even overlap cotinine's nitrogen in the pyridine ring. There's an enormous number of cotinine/piracetam hybrids that are totally unexplored. The only pyridine containing racetam I'm aware of is Nicoracetam, which pulls up nothing on google scholar, in fact I can find no mention of it outside wikipedia, so I'm not even sure why it has an entry.

I would be especially interested in a simple pyridine substitutions on the side chain, or conformationally constrained tricyclics or, heck, why not throw on a 4-phenyl and alpha methyl and make it an amphetamine, nicotine, piracetam chimera! I'm aware it probably wouldn't retain the positive effects of any in the three. Still, I would be surprised if there weren't a winner somewhere in the midst...

Monday, October 11, 2010

APPALLED AND AGHAST

Perhaps the the most improbable twitter. Whenever I read Garner's I phantasize about what his text massages must look like, I suppose this is the closest one can get without snagging his digits.

Anti-intellectualism has always been "cool" to most Americans, but Diesel is taking things a mite far with its new ad campaign: "Be stupid."
2:12 PM Sep 25th via txt

If you'll look at these Diesel ads (Google "diesel be stupid") you'll be appalled and aghast at how kids are being indoctrinated. What t ...
2:15 PM Sep 25th via txt

Diesel would love it if over-30s vehemently objected: their stuff would just become "cooler." Sad.
2:17 PM Sep 25th via txt

My overlong tweet ended suggestively "What t..." It was to be "What to do?" BAG
2:18 PM Sep 25th via txt

Brian A. Garner

Tuesday, October 5, 2010