Cognition Enhancers: Current Strategies and Future Perspectives

Cognitive impairment is the major health problem in normal aged life as well as in some disease conditions. Cognition enhancers can be used to facilitate attention abilities and acquisition, storage and retrieval of information, and to attenuate the impairment of cognitive functions associated with age and age-related pathologies. In course of time, numbers of neurotransmitters and signaling molecules have been identified which have been considered as therapeutic targets. Conventional as well newer molecules have been tried against these targets. Moreover, ongoing research progress have validated some of the newer targets such as nicotinic receptors, PDE4, 5HT6, calcium channel blockers which can be of therapeutic importance. In this review, some conventional as well as newer strategies have been discussed.