Lion's Mane and Focus and Attention
0 ADHD trials published for lion's mane as of 2026; no randomized trial has tested it in an ADHD population at any dose, for any duration
Lion's mane is one of the most searched supplements for ADHD. No randomized controlled trial has tested it in ADHD patients. The acute cognitive evidence in healthy young adults comes from two small trials that disagree: Docherty 2023 (n=41) found faster Stroop task speed 60 minutes after a single dose, while Surendran 2025 (n=18) found no significant effect on overall cognition or mood. Chronic use data in healthy adults is null to slightly negative.
Docherty et al., Nutrients, 2023; Surendran et al., Frontiers in Nutrition, 2025
Stroop task
Docherty et al. (2023) found lion's mane improved Stroop task speed at 60 minutes post-dose (p = 0.005) in healthy young adults, the closest available evidence to ADHD-relevant cognitive speed
n=18, null
the second acute trial (Surendran et al., 2025) found no significant effect on composite measures of global cognition or mood; the only isolated gain was a pegboard test of manual dexterity
Speed, not accuracy
in the same Docherty 2023 session that produced faster Stroop times, participants on lion's mane recalled fewer words correctly on immediate recall (p = 0.013), a trade-off marketing omits
Docherty et al., Nutrients, 2023; Surendran et al., Frontiers in Nutrition, 2025
View as image ↗Lion's mane is heavily marketed to people with ADHD. The search volume is high. The number of people with ADHD who have ever been given lion's mane in a clinical trial is zero.
That is the honest starting point. Lion's mane is not marketed by companies who have tested it in ADHD patients. It is marketed by companies that observed its general cognitive effects and extrapolated to ADHD without testing. The difference matters: ADHD is a specific neurodevelopmental condition with specific cognitive deficits, and general cognitive effects in healthy adults do not automatically translate to therapeutic benefit in ADHD. For the broader lion's mane overview, see what is lion's mane mushroom: a science-based overview.
Key Takeaways
- No randomized controlled trial has tested lion's mane in people with ADHD, at any dose, for any duration, on any ADHD outcome measure
- The only ADHD-specific lion's mane paper in the literature (Mohan et al., 2025, ACS Omega) is a laboratory chemistry and molecular-docking study proposing the serotonin transporter SLC6A4 as a target; it involved no animals and no patients
- Docherty and colleagues (2023) found faster Stroop task performance 60 minutes after a single dose in healthy young adults (p = 0.005), the most ADHD-relevant available finding
- The same Docherty 2023 session also found less accurate immediate word recall on lion's mane (p = 0.013); the acute effect is a speed gain with a simultaneous accuracy cost, not a clean cognitive improvement
- Surendran and colleagues (2025) did not replicate the acute benefit: in a double-blind crossover trial (n=18), lion's mane produced no significant effect on global cognition or mood, with only an isolated pegboard dexterity gain
- At 28 days in Docherty 2023, the placebo group improved on delayed word recall and the lion's mane group did not, which contradicts the "lion's mane builds memory over time" narrative
- Lai and colleagues (2013) documented NGF-inducing activity in a cell line; this is a mechanistic hypothesis for ADHD relevance, not evidence of an ADHD effect
- The 2025 systematic review of ADHD supplements by Al Shahab and colleagues assessed L-theanine, caffeine, Ginkgo biloba and Bacopa monnieri; lion's mane was outside its scope, and no comparable ADHD trial literature exists for it to review
The Honest Starting Point: No ADHD Trials Exist
Search PubMed for a randomized controlled trial of lion's mane in an ADHD population and you will not find one. Not a null trial, not an underpowered trial, not a trial with methodological problems. Nothing has been run.
This matters more than a negative result would. A negative trial would at least tell you the question was asked. The absence tells you that the entire consumer market for lion's mane as an ADHD supplement has been built without anyone testing the central claim.
There is exactly one published paper that sets out to connect lion's mane to ADHD specifically, and it is worth being precise about what it is. Mohan and colleagues (2025), writing in ACS Omega, extracted H. erinaceus in water, confirmed it was non-toxic to a neuroblastoma cell line, profiled its chemistry by FTIR and GC-MS, then used a protein-interaction network to pick out SLC6A4 — the serotonin transporter — as an ADHD-related target. They ran molecular docking simulations and found that myo-inositol from the extract bound it with reasonable affinity (−6.53 kcal/mol). That is the entire ADHD-specific literature: a chemistry characterisation plus a computer simulation of one molecule fitting one protein. No animal was given the extract for an ADHD outcome. No person was. Docking scores predict that two molecules can interact; they do not predict that a supplement changes anyone's attention.
Al Shahab and colleagues (2025) published a systematic review in Nutrients assessing the efficacy and safety of supplements for ADHD symptoms.[6] The review examined four supplements with an existing ADHD trial literature: L-theanine, caffeine, Ginkgo biloba, and Bacopa monnieri. Their conclusions were mixed — Bacopa monnieri consistently improved inattention, hyperactivity and memory; Ginkgo biloba reduced ADHD symptoms but was less effective than methylphenidate; caffeine showed no significant benefit on its own; L-theanine improved sleep efficiency but not other sleep parameters.
Lion's mane is not in that review. To be precise about what that does and does not prove: this was a review scoped to four specific supplements, so its silence on lion's mane is not a formal finding of no effect. What it illustrates is the shape of the field. Researchers reviewing ADHD supplements had four candidates with enough trial evidence to evaluate. Lion's mane, despite being one of the most-searched ADHD supplements online, was not one of them, because there is no ADHD trial evidence to evaluate.
Evidence Gap · Population Transfer
Who Lion’s Mane Has Actually Been Tested In
Every ADHD claim for lion’s mane is built by borrowing results from a population that does not have ADHD. Each step down this list moves further from the evidence and closer to the marketing.
Adults with mild cognitive impairment
Strongest evidence1 RCT · n=30 · 16 weeks
Mori 2009: significantly higher cognitive-scale scores at weeks 8, 12 and 16 versus placebo — but scores fell back 4 weeks after the supplement stopped. Conducted by researchers at a mushroom company.
Age 50–80 with documented decline. Not an ADHD profile.
Healthy young adults
Mixed and thin2 RCTs · n=41 and n=18 · acute + 28 days
Docherty 2023 found faster Stroop speed 60 minutes post-dose but less accurate immediate recall in the same session. Surendran 2025 found no significant effect on overall cognition or mood.
Right age band, but cognition is intact at baseline.
People with ADHD
No clinical evidenceNo published trial · 1 lab/docking paper
No randomized controlled trial has tested lion’s mane in an ADHD population, at any dose, for any duration, on any ADHD outcome measure. The single ADHD-specific paper (Mohan 2025) is extract chemistry plus a molecular-docking simulation against the serotonin transporter SLC6A4 — no animals, no patients.
The population the supplement is marketed to.
What the Cognitive Evidence in Healthy Adults Shows
Since no ADHD clinical data exists, the closest available evidence comes from trials in healthy young adults, who at least share the right age demographic and get tested on cognitive tasks that include attention measures.
Two acute trials exist. One found a benefit[1] and one did not.[2] They disagree.
Docherty, Doughty & Smith (2023) · Nutrients
- Population
- 41 healthy adults aged 18–45
- Intervention
- 1.8 g Hericium erinaceus, single dose (acute) and 28 days (chronic)
- Comparator
- Placebo, double-blind, parallel groups
- Finding
- Participants performed significantly quicker on the Stroop task 60 minutes post-dose (p = 0.005). In the same session, they were significantly less accurate on immediate word recall (p = 0.013). At 28 days, reduced subjective stress reached only a non-significant trend (p = 0.051).
preliminary Explicitly labelled a pilot study. The authors noted that 'null and limited negative findings were also observed' and urged caution given the small sample.
Docherty et al. (2023), Nutrients 15(22):4842
Surendran et al. (2025) · Frontiers in Nutrition
- Population
- 18 healthy adults aged 18–35
- Intervention
- 3 g of a 10:1 Hericium erinaceus fruiting-body extract, single dose
- Comparator
- Placebo, double-blind, randomised crossover
- Finding
- No significant effect on composite measures of global cognitive function or mood at 90 minutes post-dose. The only improvement on individual testing was a pegboard test of manual dexterity.
null The authors concluded acute lion's mane 'did not demonstrate a significant overall improvement in cognitive performance and mood' and that any benefit 'may be task or domain specific.' Two authors were employed by a company selling lion's mane products — a disclosed conflict that, if anything, works against the null result being an artefact of bias.
Surendran et al. (2025), Frontiers in Nutrition 12:1405796
The Stroop task in the Docherty trial measures executive function and processing speed: identifying the colour a word is printed in while the word itself names a different colour (the word RED printed in blue ink). It requires inhibiting an automatic response in order to serve the actual task demand. That is a genuine executive function measure with real overlap with ADHD-type attention difficulty, which is why this single finding carries so much weight in ADHD supplement marketing.
But one small positive pilot and one small null crossover is not a replicated finding. It is an open question with two data points pointing in different directions. Our companion article on lion's mane and attention span goes through the acute attention literature in more detail.
Claim Check
The 'two RCTs confirm it' claim
The claim
“Two randomized controlled trials have confirmed that lion's mane improves cognitive speed acutely.”
Supplement marketing that counts the number of trials rather than reading their results — Docherty 2023 and Surendran 2025 are both acute RCTs in healthy young adults, so both get cited as supportive.
What research shows
MisleadingOnly one of the two found a cognitive benefit. Docherty 2023 found faster Stroop speed at 60 minutes. Surendran 2025 found no significant effect on global cognition or mood at 90 minutes, with only an isolated manual-dexterity gain.
Counting trials is not the same as counting results. A positive pilot followed by a null trial is the ordinary pattern of a finding that may not survive replication. It can also reflect real differences in dose, preparation and assessment timing — 1.8 g of powder at 60 minutes versus 3 g of a 10:1 extract at 90 minutes — which is exactly why larger, better-standardised trials are needed before anyone claims confirmation.
Docherty et al. (2023), Nutrients; Surendran et al. (2025), Frontiers in Nutrition
The Chronic Data: The Result No One Wants to Discuss
The acute Stroop finding is the one people with ADHD are most likely to have heard about. The rest of the Docherty trial complicates it considerably.
Docherty 2023 · The Full Result
The Acute Effect Came With a Cost
Both of these outcomes came from the same trial, the same participants and the same 60-minute assessment. Supplement pages cite the first row and stop.
Stroop task speed
Executive attention · response inhibition
Significantly faster at 60 minutes post-dose
Immediate word recall accuracy
Episodic memory · encoding
Significantly less accurate in the same session
And at 28 days
Delayed word recall at 28 days
p = 0.027The placebo group recalled significantly more words at Day 29 than at Day 1; the lion’s mane group did not improve. The gain belonged to placebo.
Two things in that trial deserve more attention than they get.
First, the acute effect was not a clean win. In the same 60-minute assessment that produced faster Stroop times, participants taking lion's mane recalled fewer words correctly on immediate recall. Faster on one measure, less accurate on another, in the same people at the same timepoint. For ADHD specifically, this matters: many people with ADHD do not primarily struggle with cognitive speed. They struggle with accuracy, follow-through, working memory and error rate. A supplement that trades accuracy for speed is not obviously helping with the part that is hardest.
Second, the 28-day result. Participants took lion's mane daily for four weeks and were tested on delayed word recall. The placebo group improved on delayed recall over that period (p < 0.001 for their Day 1 to Day 29 gain); the lion's mane group did not, producing a significant treatment-by-timepoint interaction (p = 0.027). This is the data point absent from essentially every supplement company's lion's mane and ADHD content, and it directly contradicts the narrative that chronic use builds memory and focus. Our article on lion's mane, working memory and executive function covers this endpoint in depth.
The most defensible reading of the full picture: lion's mane may have a real but narrow acute effect on speed of performance in healthy young adults, inconsistently detected across two small trials, and chronic supplementation in adults with intact cognition has not been shown to produce the sustained benefits marketing implies.
Why NGF Is Theoretically Relevant to ADHD
Lai and colleagues (2013) evaluated aqueous extract of H. erinaceus in NG108-15 neuroblastoma-glioma cells, showing that it induced secretion of extracellular NGF and promoted neurite outgrowth, with the highest effect when combined with exogenous NGF.[5] Notably, the same extract failed to protect those cells against oxidative stress: the preparation had neurotrophic but not neuroprotective activity.
Martínez-Mármol and colleagues (2023) extended the mechanistic picture, showing that hericerin derivatives activate a pan-neurotrophic pathway in central hippocampal neurons converging on ERK1/2 signalling.[7] This is preclinical work in neurons and mice, not a human cognitive outcome.
ADHD involves dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for sustained attention, impulse control, working memory and executive function. A supplement that supports the cholinergic input to that region is, in principle, doing something in the right neighbourhood.
That is where the theory stops. ADHD's neurobiology centrally involves dopamine and norepinephrine signalling, which NGF does not directly address. A mechanism operating on cholinergic and neurotrophic pathways would be supportive at best, not corrective. And a mechanism that is plausible in a cell line and a mouse hippocampus is several long steps from a measurable improvement in a person's ADHD symptoms.
Mori and colleagues' 2009 trial provides the one demonstration that this mechanism can translate to a human cognitive outcome: 30 Japanese adults aged 50–80 with mild cognitive impairment took lion's mane for 16 weeks and scored significantly higher on a cognitive function scale than placebo at weeks 8, 12 and 16.[3] Two caveats travel with that result: scores fell significantly once supplementation stopped, and the study was conducted by researchers at a mushroom company. MCI is also a fundamentally different condition from ADHD — age-related decline from a previously normal baseline, versus a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference in attentional regulation.
- Cell Studies & Computationcompleted
Lai 2013: NGF induction and neurite outgrowth in NG108-15 cells (no neuroprotection against oxidative stress). Mohan 2025: the only ADHD-specific work — extract chemistry plus molecular docking of myo-inositol against SLC6A4, with no animal or human outcome
- Animal Studiescompleted
Martínez-Mármol 2023: hericerin derivatives activate ERK1/2-converging neurotrophic signalling in hippocampal neurons and improve memory in mice
- Small Human Trialscurrent
In non-ADHD populations only. Docherty 2023 (n=41, healthy) found acute Stroop speed gain with an accuracy cost; Surendran 2025 (n=18, healthy) found no overall effect; Mori 2009 (n=30, MCI) found chronic benefit in an older impaired cohort
- Large RCTs in ADHDmissing
None. No randomized trial has enrolled an ADHD population
- Meta-Analysismissing
Not possible — meta-analysis requires trials to pool
The mechanistic and preclinical rungs are populated. The human rung is populated only outside ADHD, and inconsistently. The two rungs that would justify an ADHD recommendation are empty, and the ladder cannot be climbed by extrapolation.
Lai 2013; Mohan 2025; Martínez-Mármol 2023; Docherty 2023; Surendran 2025; Mori 2009
Safety with ADHD Medications: What We Know
The most common ADHD medications are stimulants (amphetamine salts, methylphenidate) and non-stimulants (atomoxetine, guanfacine). No pharmacokinetic interaction study has tested lion's mane with any ADHD medication.
The general safety profile of lion's mane in non-ADHD populations is reassuring as far as it goes. Mori 2009 reported no adverse effects on laboratory testing over 16 weeks of supplementation. The most commonly reported complaints across the literature are mild gastrointestinal discomfort, and no serious adverse events have been attributed to lion's mane in the trials reviewed here. Cha and colleagues' 2024 systematic review of 34 human studies of mushrooms and neurocognitive health did not surface safety signals as a theme, though that review's stated focus was efficacy on mood and cognition rather than a formal safety assessment.[4]
Medication Interaction
ModerateTalk to your prescriber before adding lion's mane to ADHD medication
Concern
No pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic interaction study has been published for lion's mane with any stimulant or non-stimulant ADHD medication. The absence of documented interactions reflects an absence of research, not a demonstration of safety in combination.
What the research says
Mechanistically, an interaction looks unlikely: ADHD stimulants act on dopamine and norepinephrine transport, while lion's mane's documented activity is on neurotrophic signalling. Different systems make direct pharmacokinetic interference improbable — but improbable is not the same as ruled out, and it has never been measured.
Particularly relevant for: Anyone taking prescribed ADHD medication, and anyone whose treatment is being titrated
What to do
Disclose lion's mane use to your prescribing clinician before starting, and again if your dose is being adjusted. Do not reduce or stop prescribed ADHD medication in order to try a supplement.
Docherty et al. (2023); Mori et al. (2009); Cha et al. (2024). No interaction study exists as of 2026.
The Honest Assessment
The evidence for lion's mane in ADHD specifically is: none. The mechanism is theoretically relevant but indirect and preclinical. The acute cognitive data in healthy adults is one positive pilot, one null trial, and a speed-for-accuracy trade-off within the positive one. The chronic data in healthy adults is null to slightly negative. The population with the clearest benefit, MCI patients, has a neurological profile that has little in common with ADHD.
What this means in practice: someone with ADHD who tries lion's mane may notice something real in the hour after a dose, because a genuine acute speed effect has been detected once. That effect may not persist with daily use, was not detected at all in the second trial that looked for it, and came alongside reduced recall accuracy in the trial that found it. It has never been tested against the specific attentional and working-memory deficits that make ADHD burdensome. It is not a replacement for ADHD treatment, and it has not been studied as an adjunct to one.
This article is a review of published research and is not medical advice. Decisions about ADHD treatment, including whether to add any supplement, belong with a qualified clinician who knows your history. For a direct comparison with prescription options, see lion's mane vs stimulant medications for focus.
The Bottom Line
No randomized trial has tested lion's mane in ADHD patients, at any dose or duration. The only ADHD-specific publication (Mohan 2025) is a laboratory chemistry and molecular-docking study proposing SLC6A4 as a target, with no animal or human outcome data. The acute evidence in healthy young adults consists of two small trials that disagree: Docherty 2023 (n=41) found faster Stroop task speed at 60 minutes (p = 0.005) but simultaneously less accurate immediate word recall (p = 0.013), while Surendran 2025 (n=18) found no significant effect on global cognition or mood, with only an isolated pegboard dexterity gain. At 28 days in Docherty 2023, the placebo group improved on delayed recall and the lion's mane group did not. The NGF mechanism is documented in cells (Lai 2013) and mice (Martínez-Mármol 2023), and supports the cholinergic neurons projecting to prefrontal cortex rather than acting on it directly — theoretically relevant to ADHD, unconfirmed in any ADHD population. The one clearly positive human trial (Mori 2009) was in 50–80-year-olds with mild cognitive impairment, a different condition from ADHD.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources & References
- 1RTHM-00821·Docherty, Sarah et al. (2023). “The Acute and Chronic Effects of Lion's Mane Mushroom Supplementation on Cognitive Function, Stress and Mood in Young Adults: A Double-Blind, Parallel Groups, Pilot Study..” Nutrients.Study breakdown →PubMed →↩
- 2RTHM-00952·Surendran, Geyan et al. (2025). “Acute effects of a standardised extract of Hericium erinaceus (Lion's Mane mushroom) on cognition and mood in healthy younger adults: a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled study..” Frontiers in nutrition.Study breakdown →PubMed →↩
- 3RTHM-00165·Mori, Koichiro et al. (2009). “Improving effects of the mushroom Yamabushitake (Hericium erinaceus) on mild cognitive impairment: a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial..” Phytotherapy research : PTR.Study breakdown →PubMed →↩
- 4RTHM-00868·Cha, Sara et al. (2024). “A review of the effects of mushrooms on mood and neurocognitive health across the lifespan..” Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews.Study breakdown →PubMed →↩
- 5RTHM-00295·Lai, Puei-Lene et al. (2013). “Neurotrophic properties of the Lion's mane medicinal mushroom, Hericium erinaceus (Higher Basidiomycetes) from Malaysia..” International journal of medicinal mushrooms.Study breakdown →PubMed →↩
- 6RTHM-02048·Al Shahab, Shatha et al. (2025). “Efficiency of Different Supplements in Alleviating Symptoms of ADHD with or Without the Use of Stimulants: A Systematic Review..” Nutrients.Study breakdown →PubMed →↩
- 7RTHM-01746·Martínez-Mármol, Ramón et al. (2023). “Hericerin derivatives activates a pan-neurotrophic pathway in central hippocampal neurons converging to ERK1/2 signaling enhancing spatial memory..” Journal of neurochemistry.Study breakdown →PubMed →↩