Giurgea synthesized piracetam, the first nootropic, in 1964, and he subsequently established a set of criteria these drugs should meet. For him, nootropics must enhance learning, increase the coupling of the brain’s hemispheres, and improve executive processing (which involves tasks such as planning, paying attention, and spatial awareness). It was also important to him that the drugs be nontoxic and nonaddictive. As he put it in his book Fundamentals to a Pharmacology of the Mind: “Man is not…