Nature published the results of a recent poll regarding cognitive enhancement detailing the use of ritalin, provigil and beta-blockers. Out of the 1400 people who took the survey, 62% had taken Ritalin, 44% had used modafinil, 15% beta blockers, while 80% believe healthy adults should be permitted to take these drugs if they wish to do so, despite their known addictive properties. These are some pretty tall numbers suggesting the uses of cogniceuticals for neuroenablement continues to increase as we move towards the neurosociety. I also recommend taking a look at Nick Bostrom's piece on the need to retool regulatory paradigms to deal with enhancement.
April 11, 2008
Posted by Zack Lynch
David Brooks in today's NYTimes posits The Great Forgetting. A pretty hilarious, but insightful piece on personal and societal memory lapses.
"In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex...Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots.
Neural environmentalists will emerge from the slow foods movement, urging people to accept memory loss as a way to reduce their mental footprint. Meanwhile, mnemonic gurus will emerge offering to sell neural Viagra, but the only old memories the pills really bring back will involve trigonometry."
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April 10, 2008
Posted by Zack Lynch
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April 8, 2008
Posted by Zack Lynch
Action Potential, the blog for Nature Neuroscience, has an excellent post on recent funding trends in Chinese neuroscience along with some interesting history with respect to funding levels.
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