From the necessity of being human to the possibility of pursuing a good life: cognitive enhancement and the emergence of personhood

Throughout human history, cognition enhancement has not only been a constant, but also imperative for our species evolution and well-being. However, philosophical assumptions that enhancing cognition by biomedical means goes against some immutable human nature, combined with the lack of conclusive data about its use on healthy individuals and long-term effects, can sometimes result in prohibitive approaches. In this context, the authors seek to demonstrate that cognition enhancement, whether by “natural” or biotechnological means, is essential to the emergence of personhood, and to existence of an autonomous life that is guided by a person’s own conception of the good. In order to do so, the main possibilities of enhancing cognition through biotechnologies, along with its benefits and potentialities, as well as its risks and limitations, will be presented. Following Savulescu and Sandberg’s account on cognitive enhancement, it will be argued that it constitutes both a consumption good, being desirable and happiness-promoting to have well-functioning cognition, and a capital good that reduces risks, increases earning capacity, and forms a key part of human capital. Finally, having in mind that progress in the field of biotechnology aimed at cognition enhancement may improve a person’s (and society’s) well-being, the authors will argue that further research in the field is necessary, especially studies that takes into consideration dimensions such as dose, individual characteristics and task characteristics.

Phosphodiesterase as a Target for Cognition Enhancement in Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that affects more than 1% of the population worldwide. Dopamine system dysfunction and alterations in glutamatergic neurotransmission are strongly implicated in the aetiology of schizophrenia. To date, antipsychotic drugs are the only available treatment for the symptoms of schizophrenia. These medications, which act as D2-receptor antagonist, adequately address the positive symptoms of the disease, but they fail to improve the negative symptoms and cognitive impairment. In schizophrenia, cognitive impairment is a core feature of the disorder. Therefore, the treatment of cognitive impairment and the other symptoms related to schizophrenia remains a significant unmet medical need. Currently, phosphodiesterases (PDEs) are considered the best drug target for the treatment of schizophrenia since many PDE subfamilies are abundant in the brain regions that are relevant to cognition. Thus, this review aims to illustrate the mechanism of PDEs in treating the symptoms of schizophrenia and summarises the encouraging results of PDE inhibitors as anti-schizophrenic drugs in preclinical and clinical studies.

Pitolisant and Other Histamine-3 Receptor Antagonists—An Update on Therapeutic Potentials and Clinical Prospects

Background: Besides its well-known role as a peripheral chemical mediator of immune, vascular, and cellular responses, histamine plays major roles in the central nervous system, particularly in the mediation of arousal and cognition-enhancement. These central effects are mediated by the histamine-3 auto receptors, the modulation of which is thought to be beneficial for the treatment of disorders that impair cognition or manifest with excessive daytime sleepiness. Methods: A database search of PubMed, Google Scholar, and clinicaltrials.gov was performed in June 2020. Full-text articles were screened and reviewed to provide an update on pitolisant and other histamine-3 receptor antagonists. Results: A new class of drugs—histamine-3 receptor antagonists—has emerged with the approval of pitolisant for the treatment of narcolepsy with or without cataplexy. At the recommended dose, pitolisant is well tolerated and effective. It has also been evaluated for potential therapeutic benefit in Parkinson disease, epilepsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia. Limited studies have shown pitolisant to lack abuse potential which will be a major advantage over existing drug options for narcolepsy. Several histamine-3 receptor antagonists are currently in development for a variety of clinical indications. Conclusions: Although limited clinical studies have been conducted on this new class of drugs, the reviewed literature showed promising results for future additions to the clinical indications of pitolisant, and the expansion of the list of approved drugs in this class for a variety of indications.

Interactive Learning with Proactive Cognition Enhancement for Crowd Workers

Learning from crowds often performs in an active learning paradigm, aiming to improve learning performance quickly as well as to reduce labeling cost by selecting proper workers to (re)label critical instances. Previous active learning methods for learning from crowds do not have any proactive mechanism to effectively improve the reliability of workers, which prevents to obtain steadily rising learning curves. To help workers improve their reliability while performing tasks, this paper proposes a novel Interactive Learning framework with Proactive Cognitive Enhancement (ILPCE) for crowd workers. The ILPCE framework includes an interactive learning mechanism: When crowd workers perform labeling tasks in active learning, their cognitive ability to the specific domain can be enhanced through learning the exemplars selected by a psychological model-based machine teaching method. A novel probabilistic truth inference model and an interactive labeling scheme are proposed to ensure the effectiveness of the interactive learning mechanism and the performance of learning models can be simultaneously improved through a fast and low-cost way. Experimental results on three real-world learning tasks demonstrate that our ILPCE significantly outperforms five representative state-of-the-art methods.

Intergenerational transmission of the positive effects of physical exercise on brain and cognition

Physical exercise has positive effects on cognition, but very little is known about the inheritance of these effects to sedentary offspring and the mechanisms involved. Here, we use a patrilineal design in mice to test the transmission of effects from the same father (before or after training) and from different fathers to compare sedentary- and runner-father progenies. Behavioral, stereological, and whole-genome sequence analyses reveal that paternal cognition improvement is inherited by the offspring, along with increased adult neurogenesis, greater mitochondrial citrate synthase activity, and modulation of the adult hippocampal gene expression profile. These results demonstrate the inheritance of exercise-induced cognition enhancement through the germline, pointing to paternal physical activity as a direct factor driving offspring’s brain physiology and cognitive behavior.

LEARNING MATERIAL INTEGRATED ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY IN WASTED ENVIRONMENT OF GOLD MINE TO ENHANCE COGNITION OF ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY

LEARNING MATERIAL INTEGRATED ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY IN WASTED ENVIRONMENT OF GOLD MINE TO ENHANCE COGNITION OF ENVIRONMENTALMATERI BELAJAR TEKNOLOGI ALTERNATIF TERINTEGRASI DI LINGKUNGAN LIMBAH TAMBANG EMAS UNTUK MENINGKATKAN KEMAMPUAN LINGKUNGANNovi Nurmayanti, Sri AtunUniversitas Negeri Yogyakarta, [email protected] Kalimantan Province has damages over quater out of its area. It caused by exploration of mining, one of which is gold mining. The decay is needed for responsible of the people, include the students who live arround the area in order to make them qualified in understanding and caring to the environment. The objective of this study is to indicate the cognition improvement of environmental literacy using learning material integrated alternative technology in wasted environment of gold mine. The method used is quasi experiment. Data were collected by doing observation, documentation and test for the experiment class and control class with 31 students for each class. The result showed that there is any of cognition enhancement presented by N-Gain of 0.43 as moderate category in experiment class and 0.13 as low category in control class. The significant improvement of experiment class is attributed by the use of learning material integrated alternative technology in wasted environment of gold mine which is qualified to enhance students’ cognition of environmental literacy.AbstrakProvinsi Kalimantan Barat memiliki kerusakan karena quater keluar dari wilayahnya. Hal itu disebabkan oleh eksplorasi penambangan, salah satunya penambangan emas.Kerusakan ini harus dibertanggung jawabkan oleh masyarakat, termasuk siswa yang tinggal di sekitar daerah agar mereka memenuhi syarat dalam memahami dan peduli terhadap lingkungan. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menunjukkan peningkatan kognisi literasi lingkungan menggunakan bahan pembelajaran teknologi alternatif terintegrasi di lingkungan limbah tambang emas. Metode yang digunakan adalah eksperimen semu. Data dikumpulkan dengan melakukan observasi, dokumentasi dan tes untuk kelas eksperimen dan kelas kontrol dengan 31 siswa untuk setiap kelas. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa ada peningkatan kognisi yang disajikan oleh N-Gain dari 0,43 sebagai kategori sedang di kelas eksperimen dan 0,13 sebagai kategori rendah di kelas kontrol. Peningkatan yang signifikan dari kelas eksperimen disebabkan oleh penggunaan bahan pembelajaran teknologi alternatif yang terintegrasi dalam lingkungan limbah tambang emas yang memenuhi syarat untuk meningkatkan pengetahuan siswa tentang literasi lingkungan.

Ethical Underpinning and Implications of “Nootropic” Concept

The current generation paving the path for new research marks a milestone to attain the ancient goal of improving our cognition. To date, increased prevalence of cognitive enhancers by healthy people has raised the scientific community’s attention as well as media coverage. In particular, nootropics such as piracetam promise to offer modest improvements in cognitive performance. The long-lasting impetus of this “holistic enhancer” convinced scientists as well as ethicists to discuss its potential ethical implications and future directions. Moreover, there are discrepancies in the concept of a true nootropic between pharmacology and contemporary public culture. Here, I review the ethical aspects of nootropics raised by its potential use in cognition enhancement and substantiate the epistemological commentary on the concept of nootropic.