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People also vary in their mental abilities, allowing them to acquire certain skills more quickly or slower, which may have significant effects on life outcomes. Likewise, these skills can become obsolete as the world changes ever faster or be lost by the processes of aging. Daily life in an information society and a postindustrial economy require cognitive skills that have to be acquired through slow, effortful, and expensive processes of education and training.
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Here we disentangle the dimensions of cognitive enhancement, review prominent examples of cognitive enhancers that differ across these dimensions, and thereby provide a framework for both theoretical discussions and empirical research.Īn increasingly complex world exerts increasing demands on cognitive functions-functions that evolved for a fundamentally different environment. These cognitive enhancers differ in their mode of action, the cognitive domain they target, the time scale they work on, their availability and side effects, and how they differentially affect different groups of subjects. On a closer look, however, cognitive enhancement turns out to be a multifaceted concept: There is not one cognitive enhancer that augments brain function per se, but a great variety of interventions that can be clustered into biochemical, physical, and behavioral enhancement strategies. In the public debate, cognitive enhancement is often seen as a monolithic phenomenon. Evidence for their efficacy (or lack thereof) and side effects has prompted discussions about ethical, societal, and medical implications. In recent years, numerous strategies to augment brain function have been proposed. In an increasingly complex information society, demands for cognitive functioning are growing steadily.