Over the holidays, there was quite a bit of activity in the Nature News and Opinion forum about the ethics of cognition-enhancing drugs. Check it out if you haven’t already.

Some people were quite open about their or their colleagues’ use of these sorts of drugs. Lots of important issues were raised: regulation, long-term safety, fairness (should taking such a drug be any different as getting extra coaching or tutoring?) and efficacy (eg. just how effective are these drugs in improving cognitive performance in studies? An important question considering how many people are taking them!). One person, posting anonymously, even suggested that scientists would benefit more from the use of hallucinogenic drugs for ‘opening the mind.’

There’s also been a fair amount of chatter in the neuroscience blogosphere. On one blog is an informal poll, asking: If you could take a pill which enhanced your cognitive abilities with minimal side effects, would you?

When I checked the results today, they showed that 78 percent (43 people) responded yes.

If you like monkeys and are interested in field research in the jungles of Africa, check out these “two”:https://www.fas.harvard.edu/~primates/ “blogs”:https://africandayz.blogspot.com/ by Harvard researchers. Some good reading about tracking chimps and bonobos and dodging elephants…if only all our jobs could be as adventurous! There are also some great primate pictures.

!https://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4045/2801/320/418947/bon1.jpg!

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You’ve seen on TV those crackpot devices (shoe implants, bracelets) that have magnets that are purported to heal. Well, maybe magnetism can really have a beneficial medical effect, at least at the cellular level. Children’s Hospital and Harvard researchers have developed tiny magnetic nanoparticles that act like drugs to trigger certain activities in the cell. They describe their “findings”:https://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v3/n1/abs/nnano.2007.418.html in the latest issue of “Nature Nanotechnology.”:https://www.nature.com/nnano/

They got 30-nanometer wide beads to bind to cell-surface receptors. When exposed to a magnetic field, the beads came together, pulling the receptors along with them, and activating a series of reactions. The researchers say this technology could be used in future non-invasive medical devices to, say, deliver drugs.

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And finally, I’ll end off on something I found very interesting.

_When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy._

_When God changes your mind, that’s faith._

_When facts change your mind, that’s science._

_WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?_

_Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?”_

This is from “Edge”:https://edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html, a website that publishes essays from thought-leaders and scientific luminaries. Every year, it asks them to answer one big, deep question. You’ll find links to the answers to this year’s question from 164 very smart people “here.”:https://edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html How would you answer this?