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for educational and safety purposes
Modafinil and Armodafinil both come up in the same conversations; they overlap on Dopamine and Wakefulness. Modafinil: Modafinil is a prescription wakefulness-promoting drug, approved in the United States in 1998 for excessive sleepiness caused by narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnea, and shift work disorder. Armodafinil: Armodafinil is the prescription wakefulness drug sold as Nuvigil; it is one of the two mirror-image halves of modafinil, the longer-lasting half, so it does much the same job at a somewhat lower dose.
Modafinil is a prescription wakefulness-promoting drug, approved in the United States in 1998 for excessive sleepiness caused by narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnea, and shift work disorder. It works mainly by blocking the dopamine transporter, the protein that clears dopamine out of the synapse; human brain imaging confirms it occupies roughly half of those transporters at ordinary doses, although it binds them far more weakly than classic stimulants do. The evidence that it reduces sleepiness in the three approved sleep disorders is strong and rests on large placebo-controlled trials, but the evidence that it improves thinking in healthy, well-rested people is much weaker; the best meta-analysis found only a small overall effect confined to one narrow memory task. It is a Schedule IV controlled substance in the United States, banned in competition by WADA, and carries warnings for rare but serious skin reactions and for making hormonal birth control less reliable.
Armodafinil is the prescription wakefulness drug sold as Nuvigil; it is one of the two mirror-image halves of modafinil, the longer-lasting half, so it does much the same job at a somewhat lower dose. In the United States it is approved only to reduce excessive sleepiness in adults with narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnea, or shift work disorder, and the evidence for those three uses is genuinely solid; several 12-week placebo-controlled trials show people stay awake longer, though the benefit is measured in a few extra minutes of resisting sleep rather than a cure. Its one well-supported molecular action is weak blockade of the dopamine transporter, which brain scans confirm happens at ordinary doses; the histamine and orexin explanations that circulate online come from studies of modafinil, not of armodafinil itself. Outside the sleep indications the record thins out fast and is often negative, including a clean phase 3 failure for cancer-related fatigue, and this is a Schedule IV controlled drug carrying a pregnancy registry signal for birth defects.
both fingerprints on one instrument; where the marks line up the two compounds work the same lever, where a slot goes dark only one of them touches it. read straight from each entry's affinity table; nothing here is invented.
weak selective inhibitor
weak inhibitor
inhibits
Essentially inactive; no meaningful inhibition at concentrations reachable with human dosing
No meaningful interaction demonstrated.
Essentially inactive; no meaningful inhibition at concentrations reachable with human dosing
Downstream mediator of behavioural effect, not a binding site.
Indirect. Apparent occupancy changes because synaptic dopamine rises, not because modafinil binds the receptor.
Indirect circuit activation.
Required downstream circuit for arousal.
raises
Indirect circuit activation; not required for wake promotion.
promotes
Indirect downstream activation only; no binding site has been identified for armodafinil at any of these nuclei
Moderate inducer of CYP3A4/5 and moderate inhibitor of CYP2C19; also a CYP3A4/5 substrate for sulfone formation, while amide hydrolysis is the main clearance route. This is the pharmacokinetic basis of the label's contraceptive failure warning.
No direct binding at relevant concentrations. D2 autoreceptor effects seen in brain slice electrophysiology are secondary to raised extracellular dopamine, not to receptor binding.
Negligible direct binding
raises
No meaningful binding
strengths are the entries' qualitative ratings (strong / moderate / weak); Ki and EC50 figures appear where an entry records them.