Cindy Xie
12/28/15
Juicing the Brain Summary Soldiers are like any human who need to eat, sleep, heal, and most of all they have feelings like non-soldiers do. Researchers have figured out a way to enhance any person’s brain to limit mental fatigue in soldiers. During battle, it is very common for soldiers to stay up on a regular basis in 30 hour missions. This sleep deprivation can cause accidents and death. Researchers are using neurostimulation to improve cognition during confusing battles as well as sleep deprivation. There was an incident where two pilots killed four of their Canadian allies and injured eight other people in Afghanistan due to sleep deprivation. Both of the pilots’ attorneys pointed out that they took Dexedrine, which was a pill prescribed to pilots to keep them going and alert for 30-hour missions. A common alternative that the air force used was modafinil. This type of amphetamine nudges the brain to a more wakeful state, unlike the traditional stimulant Dexedrine. A study at Harvard University and Penn State treated 16 healthy subjects as shift workers. The subjects were deprived of sleep for 28 hours, then slept from 11 A.M to 7 P.M. for four days and stayed awake after. The results showed that the subjects that took modafinil did better on cognitive tests than the subjects on a sugar pill. Some of the subjects were able to stay awake for more than 90 hours. The key lies in a part of the hypothalamus of the brain called the superchiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which is also our brain’s biological clock. If the SCN is severed or removed it can disturb our sleep-wake cycle. The SCN which is nestled deep within the brain runs on a 25-hour cycle. Most blind people tend to have sleep disorders than those who can see. Our biological clock can be reset by exposing light signals from the retina, which is why we tend to function on a 24-hour cycle. Something very interesting about a dolphin’s brain is that they are able to keep their brain awake to control breathing and guide them to the surface. Or otherwise they would drown. The rest of their brain is allowed to sleep. PET scans are beginning to reveal the dolphin’s architecture of their brain and their special sleeping ability. If researchers are able to safely simulate this ability in the human brain, it would be a huge accomplishment and an advancement in technology. Another method of approach to enhance cognitive abilities is using electrical stimulation to specific areas of the brain. Physicians found that when they implanted electrodes in any of the cortexes in the brain, patients regained about 30% of a lost function or ability compared with 10% for other patients. Another technique is called the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This stimulation involves a magnetic coil placed on top of the head, and different kinds of magnetic pulses are passed through a cortex. The different pulses can alter the firing rate of different sets of neurons. The questions that were being debated about this are if there is a distinction between artificial aids like drugs and natural ones like exercise, if we are trying to gain advantages or are just cheating nature, and if we can manage the con sequences, and if not would the risks for the individual and for humanity be too great?