Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Uplifting Neuro Enhancement (part 3)


Have you ever heard of “neural prosthetics?” Normally, we consider prosthetics to be replacements for lost arms or legs, but neural prosthetics are brain implants designed to monitor and correct the function of neurons in the brain. An experiment was done in 2011 where five monkeys were used to study the factors that influence people with mentally degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. The monkeys were trained to identify images and symbols in a learning test, were tested and scored, and then were given doses of cocaine. As a result, their dulled intelligence produced poor results when the test was repeated (don't do drugs!) However, the same monkeys were then surgically implanted with neural prosthetics. These implants successfully restored brain functions to the monkeys. Even more impressive, however, was that when different monkeys (after having undergone the same training and then taking the test) were given the implants without ever being drugged, the monkeys' performance was beyond the original test results! Even though the intention of these implants was to restore brain function, it was proven that neural prosthetics can make monkeys smarter!

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