Hacking the Brain
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Hacking the Brain
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Re: Hacking the Brain
#2> This work was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, Germany.
What an odd area of research for Volkswagen to fund.
Re: Hacking the Brain
#3Talk about all these pharmaceuticals .. Shortcuts will fry the hardware.
A dangerous game. Good luck to those who dare. Ill always propone meditation and developing attentive discipline.
Re: Hacking the Brain
#4> This work was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, Germany. What an odd area of research for Volkswagen to fund.
It's not a commercial story.
Re: Hacking the Brain
#5I have a tangential question around brain hacking.
The Flynn effect says we're gaining an avg of 3 IQ pts every decade since the early 20th century. Meaning our great grandparents, on average, would be considered mentally handicapped compared to today's intellect.
Now certain biochemical explanations for the Flynn effect explain raw neurophysiological gains (e.g., iodine fortification in the early 20th century added 5 pts).
So my question: for whatever isn't explained by biochemical enhancement, is there an equal cognitive tradeoff in something less measurable than IQ?
I.e., do our brains act like muscle and the info age as a super gym? Or are we becoming "mentally impaired" compared to our great grandparents in other aspects (e.g., working with our hands, building communities, etc)?
I imagine our neuro-plastic brains try to make use of all of its real-estate. If so, then could it just be that we're growing in measurable ways, and becoming "mentally impaired" in non-measurable ways?
Sounds Ludditic, maybe an expert can weigh in
Re: Hacking the Brain
#6I have a tangential question around brain hacking. The Flynn effect says we're gaining an avg of 3 IQ pts every decade since the early 20th century. Meaning our great grandparents, on average, would be considered mentally handicapped compared to today's intellect. Now certain biochemical explanations for the Flynn effect explain raw neurophysiological gains (e.g., iodine fortification in the early 20th century added…
This started going back down in the 1970s:
https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-r...
Re: Hacking the Brain
#7I think new forms of human-computer interaction will likely have the largest effect on cognition, whether that's Augmented Reality or Brain-Computer Interfaces or both. It's interesting to see how quickly BCI's are developing and I wonder if AR will actually ever have commercial success. If BCI's are able to 'hotwire' human vision and pass information directly to our brain, AR displays would be rendered obsolete.
The only remaining question is how fast BCI technology can reach that level. If it takes more than 10-15 years, I think there could certainly be an age of AR devices that we soon find ourselves in, where AR goggles parallel our current smartphones. On the other hand, the rate at which the BCI field is progressing makes me feel like society might just 'skip over' this AR stage all the way to BCI's.
Re: Hacking the Brain
#8It really takes a special kind of mind to take something originally intended to be fun, subversive and/or spiritual (recreational drugs) that's existed for decades or even centuries, and turn it into yet another tool to boost your React productivity by 12.3% on Friday evenings, under the new brand of 'enhancement' or 'hacking'. Because to what other end would that 'performance' boost be put to use?
Re: Hacking the Brain
#9I have a tangential question around brain hacking. The Flynn effect says we're gaining an avg of 3 IQ pts every decade since the early 20th century. Meaning our great grandparents, on average, would be considered mentally handicapped compared to today's intellect. Now certain biochemical explanations for the Flynn effect explain raw neurophysiological gains (e.g., iodine fortification in the early 20th century added…
This started going back down in the 1970s: https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-r...
I'm not an expert, but a brief scan of secondary sources (Wikipedia and Our World In Data) show it going back to 1910 in the Americas at least:
https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence
Edit: ah excuse me, I misread. I have seen a question about its recent reversal.
Re: Hacking the Brain
#10I'm skeptical of IQ enhancing drugs ever coming about. Intelligence is so complex even the actual definition is a controversial topic.
So far we can show that intelligent enhancement can be predicated on exercise, outside of that there are temporary drugs (e.g. coffee) that "boost" intelligence but in actuality boost attention.