Scientists develop nasal spray that improves memory

Here is the full study.

They used 800mcg of Interleukin 6 taken nasally before bed.

Recall of emotional texts was clearly superior to that of neutral texts, both at learning (45.1±2.4% of the emotional texts vs. 26.4±1.7% of the neutral texts correctly recalled; P<0.001) and at retrieval testing (41.3±2.4 vs. 22.2±1.7%; P<0.001). With IL-6 intranasally administered before sleep, subjects recalled more content words from emotional texts at retrieval testing after sleep compared with placebo (P<0.03) (Fig. 2A⇓ ), whereas the recall of content words from neutral texts was comparable with both treatment conditions (P>0.32; P<0.03 for the IL-6/placebo × emotional/neutral interaction). Memory performance on the visuospatial 2-D object-location memory task measured in the number of correctly recalled matching card locations and procedural finger sequence-tapping task measured in the accuracy of the sequences were not affected by IL-6 (P>0.33 for all comparisons) (Table 1⇓ ).

There was no difference in initial learning performance between the IL-6 and placebo condition (P>0.45 for all comparisons). Also, intranasal administration of IL-6 did not influence general retrieval abilities, as assessed by the word fluency test in the retrieval phase (IL-6 vs. placebo: 30.7±2.5 vs. 32.5±2.2 items retrieved; P>0.34). Similar to previous observations (15⇓ , 36)⇓ , emotional compared with neutral texts were rated as distinctly more startling (2.3±0.1 vs. −2.2±0.3), emotional (1.6±0.2 vs. −2.2±0.2), negative (−2.0±0.2 vs. 0.3±0.2), arousing (0.4±0.2 vs. −2.3±0.2), serious (1.9±0.2 vs. 0.5±0.2), comprehensible (1.8±0.2 vs. −1.0±0.3), and vivid (1.3±0.3 vs. −0.5±0.3) and as less difficult (−0.4±0.3 vs. 1.4±0.3) and more important (0.3±0.3 vs. −1.9±0.2; each P<0.001). Emotional texts were also judged as more interesting (0.4±0.3 vs. −1.6±0.3; P<0.01). Emotional and neutral texts did not differ in ratings of familiarity (−1.4±0.3 vs. −1.5±0.3; P>0.48). Notably, ratings on the emotional texts did not differ between treatment conditions (P>0.53 for all comparisons).

So it really pertains to retention of emotional information, not purely neutral memorization. IL-6 seems to improve the signaling between the amygdala, hippocampus, neocortical areas; which is necessary to consolidate emotional memories. While interesting, it's not like the linked article makes you believe.