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Cognitive Enhancement May Not be All It's Cracked Up To Be.

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday October 27 2015, @08:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the medication-must-be-the-answer dept.

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

Humans in 2015 have a small arsenal of tools available to at least temporarily upgrade our brains via the increasingly popular paradigm of "cognitive enhancement."

This is a different boost than that offered by sketchy as-seen-on-NPR brain training schemes, offering literal, physiological neuro-manipulations via either chemistry or electricity. It's no secret that drugs like Adderall and Ritalin are widely sought after among healthy populations looking for an extra push, while electronic stimulant headsets are seeing a somewhat quieter or at least less fretted-about rise. Do they really work? We mostly don't know, warns cognitive neuroscientist Martha Farah in this week's issue of Science.

Original paper available here, or you can just read the vice.motherboard.com article.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Tuesday October 27 2015, @04:43PM

    by umafuckitt (20) on Tuesday October 27 2015, @04:43PM (#255172)

    If you want to "enhance" your brain (not that I really know what the means) then read a good book, watch a documentary, go to a museum, meet some new people, etc.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:03PM (#255212)

    eh well it may make some less ignorant but that wont make them more smart.

  • (Score: 2) by unzombied on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:20PM

    by unzombied (4572) on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:20PM (#255219)
    Just because this is the method successfully used for 1000s of years doesn't make it... uhhh, hmm, maybe that does make it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:34PM (#255224)

    And get enough sleep. Very many people living "modern lifestyles" don't get enough sleep.

    Just because you wake up after 4-5 hours doesn't mean it's time to start your waking life. Stay calm and go back to sleep again even if it takes a while: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 [bbc.com]

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/ [nih.gov]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_sleep_deprivation_on_cognitive_performance [wikipedia.org]