SMART POLICY: COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Cognitive enhancement may be defined as the amplification or extension of core capacities of the mind through improvement or augmentation of internal or external information processing systems. Cognition refers to the processes an organism uses to organize information. These include acquiring information (perception), selecting (attention), representing (understanding) and retaining (memory) information, and using it to guide behavior (reasoning and coordination of motor outputs). Interventions to improve cognitive function may be directed at any of these core faculties. Many methods for enhancing cognition are of a quite mundane nature, and some have been practiced for thousands of years. The prime example is education and training, where the goal is often not only to impart specific skills or information but also to improve general mental faculties such as concentration, memory, and critical thinking. Other forms of mental training, such as yoga, martial arts, meditation, and creativity courses are also in common use. Caffeine is widely used to improve alertness. Herbal extracts reputed to improve memory are popular, with sales of Ginko biloba alone on the order of several hundred million dollars per year in the U.S. In an ordinary supermarket or health food store we can find a veritable cornucopia of energy drinks and similar preparations, vying for consumers hoping to turbo-charge their brains. As cognitive neuroscience has advanced, the list of prospective biomedical enhancements has steadily expanded. Yet to date, the most dramatic advances in our