Strange food for thought

In the 1956 sci-fi adventure "Forbidden Planet," an American astronaut receives a "brain boost" from an alien machine that temporarily gives him enhanced mental powers. Before he dies from the effects of the boost, he helps unravel the mystery of how the civilization became extinct: It couldn't control its own immense mental powers.

More recently, the characters in "The Matrix" film series are shown "downloading" knowledge into their brains nearly instantaneously. In "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" the lead character has the uncomfortable memories of a love affair removed from his mind, with unexpected results.

What used to be confined to speculative fiction is fast becoming scientific fact. Brain boosting, or "neural enhancement," is already being done - and much more powerful techniques are on the way. Some observers say we're rushing into this brain-gain revolution without sufficient thought or preparation.

"We're about to be handed a bunch of powerful new capabilities ... to refashion ourselves, improve ourselves," notes Martha Farah, a director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, in an e-mail. "We should always think through the ethical consequences of changing ourselves and our lives, for the individual and for society."

While some may worry that we'll turn ourselves into a race of Frankensteins, others look forward to new Einsteins. Optimists argue that humans are only doing what they've always been doing: trying to improve themselves, whether it's taking caffeine to stay alert or undergoing cosmetic surgery to change their appearance.

The brain-enhancement revolution is already under way. The drug Ritalin, first given to control hyperactivity in children, now is routinely used by healthy high school and college students to sharpen their thinking before taking exams. The long-term health effects are unknown.

Modafinil was developed to treat narcolepsy, a rare condition causing daytime sleepiness. But now it is used by those who simply want to be wakeful and alert, and recently seven American track and field athletes admitted to using it to boost their mental preparation. Transcranial magnetic stimulation, used for nearly two decades to treat depression, has also been found to enhance problem-solving abilities in normal individuals.

Improved brain imaging, or mapping, is yielding new techniques such as "brain fingerprinting," which purports to be able to locate memories within the brain, raising troubling possibilities for invasion of privacy. "There's nothing more private and personal than a person's memories," says Richard Glen Boire, codirector of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics in Davis, Calif.

Some scientists see a new field emerging they call "neuroethics," which would try to identify where the ethical land mines are buried and how to deal with them. These judgment calls will be vital because the revolution in the neurosciences "is just as important as the genetic revolution, but no one is paying attention," says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

As in the case of Ritalin, most of the current techniques for enhancing mental abilities come from efforts to treat diseases. In the 2002 book "Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution," influential thinker Francis Fukuyama called for governmental regulation of using such technologies for neural enhancement.

But even others with ethical concerns say drawing such a "bright line" between the use of a drug or other technology for therapy or for enhancement is problematic.

Pharmaceutical companies are going to want to produce and market drugs that appeal to 100 percent of the population, not just the minority who are sick at any given time, Mr. Boire points out. After all, many people would like a better memory, to be able to think a little more quickly, or to forget troubling memories.

Yet a number of issues of personal liberty are being raised, he says. "What rights does the person have to manage their own thought processes?" Boire asks. "Thought is not just something that is changed by reading a book or hearing a speaker. Now, and more and more, as time goes on, thought will be changed by pharmacological agents."

How will we be able to say yes to therapy but no to enhancement? Professor Caplan asks. He balks at the idea of telling someone "you can take a pill if you have dyslexia, but you can't take a pill if you're just a poor reader. It's very tough. It won't work."

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