There was an interesting study mentioned in Wilshar’s review on “Dyslexia and the Nootropic Concept” about dogs learning more rapidly with piracetam.

The study is by Khananashvili M.M., in his Pathology of Higher Nervous Activity (Behaviour), which was published in Russia in 1982, and never translated to English. I think it is important to get these kinds of studies indexed into the literature, so I will reproduce what Wilshar explained here in full:

In a Russian study (Khananashvili, 1982) a dog is left in a free-field condition whilst being observed from a one-way screen. The dog must approach an operant conditioning corner where he is given a discriminant stimulus (light or sound) which indicates which table he must jump on to receive food. The reinforcement schedule is very demanding because the dog must run as fast as he can and must not make any mistakes. Under these conditions many dogs fail to learn effectively and develop an experimental neurosis. Dogs that are good learners discover that the most adaptive method of maximising the amount of food and reducing the amount of stress involved in running to the correct table, is to increase the inter-stimulus interval. Under the influence of piracetam more dogs learn the “adaptive” behaviour pattern and those learning this pattern do so more quickly. The process involved here may be analogous to that which we have found in LD children who “learn to learn” more effectively.”