"When you go off the medication, you're not likely to remember a lot of what you learned while you were on it," Caplan says. And because your attention is sharpened and focused, anything you experience can be more intense-in both positive and negative ways." But these drugs also have a downside. "Drink a bunch of coffee and take a bunch of NoDoz before an exam, and you'll concentrate better. "We knew that when I was in college," Caplan says. The closest thing in reality might be stimulant drugs such as Adderall and those prescribed for ADD and ADHD, which help users focus and concentrate-just as NZT does for Morra.
We just don't know how to quantify that."Īs screenwriter Dixon admits, NZT is completely made up: There is no magic pill to grant you easy access every part of your brain, all the time. "When I turned 50, I took singing lessons for the first time in my life," she says.
In addition, Caplan notes, that there are parts of our brains that we don't often use, but we have the choice to return to them. "We can't, at this point, look at everything that's happening in the brain at every given moment," she says. Regardless of how often people repeat this kind of saying, Caplan says, scientists' understanding of the inner workings of the brain just isn't sophisticated enough to give an exact percentage.
The drug dealer in Limitless tells Morra that we only use 20 percent of our brains. Paula Caplan, a clinical and research psychologist at Harvard University. But what can Limitless and its wonder-drug tell us about how real-life drugs affect the brain, and the state of brain science today? To get to the bottom of what's accurate-and what's pure fiction-we spoke to Dr.
Limitless is accurate in showing that drugs that affect the brain and nervous system can make users like Morra more angry and violent, or cause them to lose track of time and disregard danger. Burger created infinity zooms, seemingly continuous shots that started at one end of Manhattan and ended up on the other, to illustrate "the way Morra's mind moved, and the way he moved through the city, which was relentless and unstoppable." But when he's on the drug, the colors are brighter and the camera highly controlled. "What was it like to feel the drug for the first time? How was his sense of perception different-to be on it, blasting along, at 1000 percent?" Burger created two distinct visual styles: When Morra isn't on the drug, the film is muted and the camera handheld. "I was very interested in figuring out a way to represent his mental experience visually," Burger says. Director Neil Burger tells PM that he studied psychoactive drugs on the market and in development, and incorporated what he found into the script and the film's visuals. Nevertheless, neuroscience informed the look of Limitless. Overexplanation kills mystery, and killing mystery kills audience excitement and involvement."
But I didn't attempt to overeducate myself, because that could lead to paragraphs of stupefying dialogue. "Half the people I know are on antidepressants, and this kind of thing is in our popular culture. "I'm ashamed to tell you, and I think the writer of the novel would tell you the same thing, but it's all totally made up," she says. Screenwriter Leslie Dixon, who adapted Limitless from a book by Alan Glynn called The Dark Fields, admits that she didn't dig deeply into the science of how drugs affect the brain while she was writing the script. But life-changing benefits don't come without side effects: Morra starts losing track of time, ending up in places with no idea how he got there. He can see through the world financial markets and makes a fortune in just weeks. He writes his book in two days, and it's brilliant. In the film, Edward Morra (Bradley Cooper) is a sad-sack writer who can't actually put pen to paper, until he gets the drug from his ex-brother-in-law and finds his world transformed. Of course, NZT doesn't exist outside of the world of Limitless, in theaters today. Media Platforms Design Team NZT is the very definition of a wonder drug: It gives the user access to every part of his brain, including long-forgotten memories, obscure facts he learned 15 years ago in college, and even everything he's ever heard.