Ritalin as a causal perturbation.

Causal perturbations provide the strongest tests of the relationships between brain mechanism and brain function. In cognitive neuroscience, persuasive causal perturbations are difficult to achieve. In a recent paper, Ni et al. cleverly use the neuropsychiatric drug methylphenidate (Ritalin) to causally test the brain mechanisms that support goal-directed attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]