Do you think that nootropics, in addition to proper nutrition and excersize actually have effective and long term improvements in mental ability? I have two lines of reasoning, which go something like: 1. No, the brain cannot be improved upon by increasing/decreasing LTP or plasticity because millions of years of evolution would have selected for and optimized the most useful/best levels of such things - anything above or below normal levels of plasticity would be detrimental. If you can, it will come at a cost of other ability. For instance, if you improve your focus you decrease your creativity, or vice versa. 2. Yes because society and how we learn has change faster than evolution could keep pace, and so having a more plastic brain might be useful as opposed to previously. More plasticity makes for the brain to be less stable in the long run, but this might be extremely useful because politics, language, coding practices, and other behaviors are often changing rapidly. I guess the debate is something to the effect of: are our brains actually subjected to such radically different demands now than thousands/millions of years before that it is not optimized for dealing with such circumstances?
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 01:55:26 +0000
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