Deans' stroke musings: Why Cognitive Enhancement Is in Your Future (and Your Past)

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Why Cognitive Enhancement Is in Your Future (and Your Past)

All of us survivors probably need cognitive enhancement.
And the picture is cool.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/why-cognitive-enhancement-is-in-your-future-and-your-past/252566/

It could be that we are on the verge of a great deluge of cognitive enhancement. Or it's possible that new brain-enhancing drugs and technologies will be nothing compared to how we've transformed our minds in the past. If it seems that making ourselves "artificially" smarter is somehow inhuman, it may be that similar activities are actually what made us human.

Let's look at the nature of the new technology. Last week a team of ethicists from Oxford released a paper on the implications of using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (TDCS) to improve cognition in human beings. Recent years have seen some encouraging, if preliminary, lab results involving TDCS, a deep brain stimulation technique that uses electrodes placed outside the head to direct tiny painless currents across the brain. The currents are thought to increase neuroplasticity, making it easier for neurons to fire and form the connections that enable learning. There are signs that the technology could improve language acumen, math ability, and even memory. The Oxford paper argues that TDCS has now reached a critical stage where its risks must be carefully considered before the research goes further.

Of course, not everyone is convinced that the technology will pan out. Some remain skeptical of TDCS, calling it a fad, the latest in a long series of "neuro-myths" that bubble up when scientists distort or embellish their findings in the name of publicity. But even if brain stimulation fizzles, the questions raised by the Oxford paper are going to be with us for a long time. That's because TDCS is just one of many promising new technologies that neuroscientists hope will enhance cognition, including smart pills, genetic engineering, and brain-to-computer interfacing. As deep brain stimulation has become the flavor du jour in neuroscience, bioethicists have increasingly given it a starring role in the thought experiments they use to tease out the philosophical dilemmas posed by cognitive enhancement.

full article at the link.