Akademik

n.

The use of pharmaceuticals to enhance cognitive function in a healthy brain.

Still, even if you acknowledge that cosmetic neurology is here to stay, there is something dispiriting about the way the drugs are used—the kind of aspirations they open up, or don't. Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist at U.C. Davis, is skeptical of what he mockingly calls "brain doping."

—Margaret Talbot, " Brain Gain: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot," The New Yorker, April 27, 2009

Plastic surgery was also pioneered to tackle a serious medical problem, the horrendous facial injuries suffered by combatants in the First World War, but has since become an accepted technique to improve on nature and hold back age.

Cosmetic neurology may be next. Don't like the shape of your remembrance of things past? Give your memory a nip and tuck.

—Ben Macintyre, " I won't give my memory a nip and tuck: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article2033963.ece," The Times (London), July 6, 2007

Advances in cognitive neuroscience and neuropharmacology are yielding exciting treatments for neurologic diseases. Many of these treatments are also likely to have uses for people without disease. Here, I review the ways in which medicine might make bodies and brains function better by modulating motor, cognitive, and affective systems. These potential "quality of life" interventions raise ethical concerns, some related to the individual and others related to society. Despite these concerns, I argue that major restraints on the development of cosmetic neurology are not likely.

—Anjan Chatterjee, " Cosmetic neurology: http://ccn.upenn.edu/cosmetic neurologychatterjee/anjan_pdfs/CosmeticNeurology.pdf" (PDF), Department of Neurology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, The University of Pennsylvania, January 8, 2004