Drugs to enhance cognition are reported on in the BBC report by the UK organization Foresight. This report makes futuristic predictions in the brain health area about brain enhancers. Drugs that can have a positive influence on the brain, according to the article, might get abused by healthy people, including children, might one day take drugs to boost their intelligence scientists predict.
The Foresight report states: “In a world that is increasingly non-stop and competitive, the individual’s use of such substances may move from the fringe to the norm, with cognition enhancers used as coffee is today”.
The growing availability of these brain enhancing drugs will open up a range of social and ethical questions, including whether it should be permitted for people to use them to gain a mental advantage over others (similar to how steroids are debated today in sports).
How will drugs that enhance cognition be monitored? Will mathletes start getting tested for controlled substances? Will students have to get drug tested for brain enhancers before taking the SATs?
These are questions only time will tell. Additional information on the report is also available on the Foresight as well as this article about cognition enhancers from one of the study’s researchers based at the University of Bristol.