Dopaminergic Enhancement of Learning and Memory in Healthy Adults and Patients With Dyslexia

University Hospital Muenster

Status and phase: Unknown; Phase 4

Conditions: Dyslexia

Treatments: Drug: Levodopa

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00111371

LL-001 Project on Dyslexia;

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study aims to determine whether levodopa, in combination with a high frequency training of (grammatical) rules, is effective in boosting learning success in healthy subjects and whether this kind of training in combination with levodopa improves reading and spelling abilities of patients with dyslexia.

Full description

Prior work by our group shows that d-amphetamine and the dopamine precursor levodopa markedly improve word learning success in healthy subjects. In this randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial, we probe whether daily administration of levodopa, coupled with a training of grammatical rules, improves the training success in healthy adults as compared to placebo administration. In the second step of this study, patients with dyslexia will be trained with the identical protocol. We postulate that the combination of intensive training in language rules and levodopa improves the reading, writing, and spelling abilities of patients with dyslexia.

Enrollment: 100 estimated patients

Sex: Male

Ages: 18 to 35 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Right-handedness
• Age between 18-35 years
• Primary language: German

Exclusion criteria

• Known allergy to levodopa or tetrazine
• History of medication/drug abuse
• Acute nicotine withdrawal or > 10 cigarettes per day
• >6 cups/glasses of coffee, caffeine drinks or energy drinks per day
• >50 grams of alcohol per day
• Hypertonia
• Arteriosclerosis
• Diabetes, asthma, or glaucoma
• Psychiatric disease
• Neurologic disease
• Other medication

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind