Nootropics, Nootropes, and BC-I headware

[Bio-Hazard]

So today I got my self out in the blinding, burning sun and went to Barnes and nobles to read some stuff.

 

I read Scientific American and Scientific American Mind today and read up on two interesting articles: One about BC-I another about Smart Drugs

 

What I’m getting at here is the technological and pharmaceutical revolutions that are going to be active within this century. As people become more intelligent, they are going to want to become intelligent at a faster pace.

 

Smart drugs, also known as nootropes, can supposedly bring up the cognitive thinking abilities of people. How well they work... I don't know.

 

In scientific mind they presented some basic drugs such as Ritalin and donepezil that are said to enhance cognitive ability.

 

I remember being on Ritalin: It made me quiet, antisocial, and freaking smart;scary smart.

 

However, is it true that such things as Ritalin really make the patient have greater cognitive ability?

 

What is greater: The ability to stay calm, or the ability to concentrate and absorb information better?

 

I'm guessing that if you can encode information better and retain it that would allow someone to be more intelligent.

 

So now there is nootropric drugs abound in the world that aren't controlled by the FDA and are OTC, people are having a biomedical ethics issue with this. I see no issue, it's called "bettering yourself."

 

Not only will this become a problem but the idea of BC-I. I'm not trying to have a bioethical discussion here; I’m just stating that there will most likely be a revolution. As I'm discovering it, I'm noticing why people are going into biochemistry and not neuroscience.

 

The fields are split and the people have their own views, biochemistry on one hand already has advancement for learning enhancement before BC-I does, so biochemists are taking over the current field of excelled learning.

 

Seemingly we will use drugs before we use computer hardware for controlling excelled learning to an exponential degree.

 

The question I’m posing here is, “What OTC drugs really do work?” There are so many scam artists out there and people who haven’t been approved by certain agencies that no one can tell what a true smart drug is.

 

If these smart drugs really do work, then the government will have to step in to stop people from buying materials. Such has happened with the psuedophedrine market, however that was about illicit drug use that can kill you. However, I’m sure the government would be willing to stop anyone from getting too smart and taking them over.

 

I’m researching many drugs and it seems thing like (Bacopa monnieri) have an ability to enhance cognitive abilities.

 

How much do you know about smart drugs and which ones work? How do they work? Why do they work that way?

 

While I have this thread out there, I'd like to ask another question which will make this more neuroscientific.

 

Why is it that when people have enhanced cognitive ability that they are able to feel more pain?

Sure, pain is in the head.. but why do they feel more pain? Are somehow the electrical pathways and currents enhanced thus receptors are weak and more prone to surges? What makes this happen?

[Bio-Hazard]

Should I rephrase? Or does no one know?

[bascule]

I see greater potential for enhancing cognitive ability by linking the brain to information system than I do through the use of drugs. Both are going to happen, and perhaps the latter will precipitate the former...

 

But the bottom line is that we can't look at trends in scientific/technological advancement as continuing at the present (exponentially increasing) rates; the rates will increase with available brainpower and accessibility to information.

 

We are going to start evolving much much faster very very soon.

[Bio-Hazard]

I'm looking for peer-reviewed papers that have to do with scientific research on nootropes, that could help verify the reliability of some of the OTC drugs.

 

I like your idea of the BC-I.. but I'm discovering some breaking stuff.. well for the analog to digital to analog system to occur, we're going to have to tap into the chemical reactions that occur in the brain, hopefully those would be the analog.. then we'd have to convert that process and the way it works into digital. We won't be playing with simple copper wires and silicon.. we might be using calcium and some other type of metals.. I suspecting that the learning process of atomic elements and chemicals will have a lot with this BC-I mind uploading process.

 

I might be crazy here, but there might be a differnt type of encoding system for the brain that relates to analog.. but more an a quantum mechanical scale that has to do with atoms.. I'm sure the encoding system has a lot to do with the chemical actions of the atoms in the brain between different regions. Perhaps similiar to binary making it digital.

 

Other than that...

 

Many of these drugs are being developed for alzheimer's disease but can be used to increase memory and learning ability in a normal person without causing cancerous effects.

 

The side-effect I'm currently researching behind "Smart Drugs" is the idea behind them that if you take them, the ability and process in which the brain makes them regulary will drop.

 

For example, if a person does heroine or some other drugs, it increases endorphins in the body unnaturally. You see, the body makes endorphins regulary to help your body cope with pain, but these unnatural endorphins tell the body that you are taking in an artificial source now. The body thinks for itself and decides to stop producing endorphins naturally. That's why when people stop doing heroin and other drugs their body is prone to pain and injury excitment.

 

The side-effect is, "Will the brain stop the regular process in which the learning process occurs through chemical reactions?" In other words.. if I take artifical drugs to get smart... will the body stop producing the natural chemicals that make me smart?

 

Of course, over time the body starts remaking them.. but it is a very slow process, which creates a withdrawal process.

 

Read this article to get a somewhat decent understanding...

 

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0000E503-E27C-1329-A27C83414B7F0000

 

1a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_potentiation

1b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropics

2. http://nootropics.com/smartdrugs/smart-drug.html

3. http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/molecules/pdb54_1.html

 

4. http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/CONSUMER/CON00207.html

"The research data I've seen was not based on well-controlled studies in which a

'smart' drug and a placebo were compared, and in which there was an objective measure

of how successful the drug was, such as having to remember someone's name," Crook

said.

"The clinical evidence relied on animal models, but animals and humans may not

react the same. Individual people are different, too. A 25-year-old stockbroker won't

react to certain stimuli in the same way that an older person would."

 

The interesting thing behind this is that a few decades ago, people will still trying to discover the complete teaching process of animals that were not human. We still to this day are trying to figure out their learning process and have become amazed by things that betty the crow can do by herself. Certainly some animals must learn differently than humans having a different neural structure.

[bascule]

As far as welding our brains onto digital information networks, here's a (2 year old) article on neuroprosthetics:

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3488

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2843099.stm

 

The article is about a prosthetic replacement for the hippocampus, but since they've created a mathematical model of how the hippocampus works, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine this model being used to "inject" data into our short term memory.

[Bio-Hazard]

Hmm.. interesting.. I don't think it would alter personality in much of a way since personality is already cut off and can't be altered from new information coming in without the chip implant. However, personality may be able to be altered from within, certainly there would be little degree of effect from the neurological chip using the same scientific and mathematical principles of the hippocampus encoding.

 

I should get some sleep and come back to this thread later today.

[bascule]

I'm linking the relevant section of Vernor Vinge's paper on technological singularity:

 

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html

 

Computer networks and human-computer interfaces seem more mundane than AI, and yet they could lead to the Singularity. I call this contrasting approach Intelligence Amplification (IA). IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is. But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence. Even now, the team of a PhD human and good computer workstation (even an off-net workstation!) could probably max any written intelligence test in existence.

 

And it's very likely that IA is a much easier road to the achievement of superhumanity than pure AI. In humans, the hardest development problems have already been solved. Building up from within ourselves ought to be easier than figuring out first what we really are and then building machines that are all of that. And there is at least conjectural precedent for this approach. Cairns-Smith [6] has speculated that biological life may have begun as an adjunct to still more primitive life based on crystalline growth. Lynn Margulis (in [15] and elsewhere) has made strong arguments that mutualism is a great driving force in evolution.

 

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded. What goes on with AI will often have applications in IA, and vice versa. I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence. With that insight, we may see projects that are not as directly applicable as conventional interface and network design work, but which serve to advance us toward the Singularity along the IA path.

 

Here are some possible projects that take on special significance, given the IA point of view:

 

• Human/computer team automation: Take problems that are normally considered for purely machine solution (like hill-climbing problems), and design programs and interfaces that take advantage of humans' intuition and available computer hardware.
  
• Considering all the bizarreness of higher dimensional hill-climbing problems (and the neat algorithms that have been devised for their solution), there could be some very interesting displays and control tools provided to the human team member.
  
• Develop human/computer symbiosis in art: Combine the graphic generation capability of modern machines and the esthetic sensibility of humans. Of course, there has been an enormous amount of research in designing computer aids for artists, as labor saving tools. I'm suggesting that we explicitly aim for a greater merging of competence, that we explicitly recognize the cooperative approach that is possible. Karl Sims [23] has done wonderful work in this direction.
  
• Allow human/computer teams at chess tournaments. We already have programs that can play better than almost all humans. But how much work has been done on how this power could be used by a human, to get something even better? If such teams were allowed in at least some chess tournaments, it could have the positive effect on IA research that allowing computers in tournaments had for the corresponding niche in AI.
  
• Develop interfaces that allow computer and network access without requiring the human to be tied to one spot, sitting in front of a computer. (This is an aspect of IA that fits so well with known economic advantages that lots of effort is already being spent on it.)
  
• Develop more symmetrical decision support systems. A popular research/product area in recent years has been decision support systems. This is a form of IA, but may be too focussed on systems that are oracular. As much as the program giving the user information, there must be the idea of the user giving the program guidance.
  
• Use local area nets to make human teams that really work (ie, are more effective than their component members). This is generally the area of "groupware", already a very popular commercial pursuit. The change in viewpoint here would be to regard the group activity as a combination organism. In one sense, this suggestion might be regarded as the goal of inventing a "Rules of Order" for such combination operations. For instance,group focus might be more easily maintained than in classical meetings. Expertise of individual human members could be isolated from ego issues such that the contribution of different members is focussed on the team project. And of course shared data bases could be used much more conveniently than in conventional committee operations. (Note that this suggestion is aimed at team operations rather than political meetings. In a political setting, the automation described above would simply enforce the power of the persons making the rules!)
  
• Exploit the worldwide Internet as a combination human/machine tool. Of all the items on the list, progress in this is proceeding the fastest and may run us into the Singularity before anything else. The power and influence of even the present-day Internet is vastly underestimated. For instance, I think our contemporary computer systems would break under the weight of their own complexity if it weren't for the edge that the USENET "group mind" gives the system administration and support people! The very anarchy of the worldwide net development is evidence of its potential. As connectivity and bandwidth and archive size and computer speed all increase, we are seeing something like Lynn Margulis' [15] vision of the biosphere as data processor recapitulated, but at a million times greater speed and with millions of humanly intelligent agents (ourselves).

 

Kurzweil doesn't even mention the possibility of improving intelligence medicinally. But obviously it would have the same ultimate effect; the smarter the pieces of the system are, the faster it evolves.

[theman]

I used adrafinil for about 4 months a few years ago and found it to be absolutely amazing. once the drug took full effect i began teaching myself chemistry (previous knowledge was advanced grade 11) and physics(no experience). within a few months i had a grasp of the then current theories of quantum physics and was successfully performing chemical synthesis and completely understanding the reaction processes involved.

 

before i used adrafinil i was working construction during mid winter, i was depressed, drinking and getting high whenever i could. after it took effect i was totally happy to cram as much information into my brain as i could and i greatly enjoyed it. the depression was completely removed. i was enjoying my work, and actually excelling, i was promoted and was in charge of several co-workers who were previously faster and ****ed up less than me. but the drug had side effects including a funny taste in my mouth and potential liver toxicity.

 

i didn't use another 'smart drug' in theraputic manner like this until about 6 months ago when i began taking modafinil, the descentant of adrafinil. once again i was depressed, not enjoying my work, and performing poorly. as expected the results were the same as adrafinil, minus the side effects. this is because adrafinil is metabolized into two products, once being modafinil, the other being an inactive with the potential for liver toxicity in some people.

 

 

Did the drugs change my life? definately. but are they the exclusive reason for me being where i am now? i think not. by my experience/opinion is this: these drugs when used with with a goal in mind have the potential to greatly enhance one's life and abilities. however the effects are only temporary, eventually the drugs lose ffectivity and it makes no sense to continue using them. i recently stopped using mondafinil after 6 months of using and i feel fine. i have learned a great deal about how to effectively use my time and energy in the past 6 months and this experience and knowledge will be with me forever.

 

 

PLEASE BE AWARE: these drugs are sold for outrageous prices online, and i don't reccomend getting them from the net unless you are very well educated on them and get the advise of a doctor who is also well educated on them or willing to have a look into the safety and help you analyze the risk/benefits of using the drugs. i know i lot about chemistry and pharmacology and spend way too much time researching these ares because i just love the topics so much.

 

BE SAFE!! don't use drugs for an 'edge'. if you do it, do it to improve your overall quality of life in the long term.

[theman]

double post...