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This book critically explores and analyses the scientific and ethical debates surrounding cognitive enhancers. Including contributions from neuroscientists, neuropsychopharmacologists, ethicists, philosophers, public health professionals, and policy researchers, the book offers a multidisciplinary, critical consideration of this topic.
List of contents
- Preface
- Editorial
- List of Contributors
- Part I: Introduction to the Volume
- 1: Ruud ter Meulen, Ahmed Mohammed, and Wayne Hall: Should we get smarter by taking cognitive drugs? Towards a critical appraisal of arguments and evidence in the debate on cognitive enhancement
- 2: Ruud ter Meulen: The ethical debate on human enhancement and cognitive enhancement by way of biotechnologies
- Part II: Risk and benefits of the use of neuropharmacological drugs for cognitive enhancement
- 3: Reinoud de Jongh: Overclocking the brain? The potential and limitations of Cognition-Enhancing Drugs
- 4: Charles Massie, Eric Yamga, and Brendon Boot: Neuro-enhancement: a call for better evidence on safety and efficacy
- 5: Andreas Heinz and Sabine Müller: Exaggerating benefits and downplaying risks in the debate on cognitive neuroenhancement
- 6: Ahmed Mohammed: The Effects of Modafinil on Creativity: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial
- 7: Ahmed Mohammed: Does modafinil improve cognitive functioning in healthy individuals?
- 8: Priyanka P. Shah-Basak and Roy H. Hamilton: Cognitive enhancement using noninvasive brain stimulation: weighing opportunity, feasibility, and risk
- 9: Mark Attiah: The use of brain stimulation technology for cognitive enhancement and the potential for addiction
- 10: Stephan Schleim and Boris B. Quednow: Debunking the ethical neuroenhancement debate
- Part III: Ethical, philosophical, legal and policy issues of cognitive enhancement
- 11: Ralph Hertwig and Thomas Hills: The evolutionary limits of enhancement
- 12: Alex McKeown: Enhancement and therapy: is it possible to draw a line?
- 13: Maartje Schermer: On the argument that enhancement is cheating
- 14: Dan Stein: Psychiatric nosology and cognitive enhancement
- 15: Heather Bradshaw-Martin: Will cognitive enhancement lead to more well-being? The case of people with disabilities
- 16: Imogen Goold: The Legal Aspects of Cognitive Enhancement Legal regulations on cognitive enhancement practices
- 17: Brad Partridge: Students and 'smart drugs': empirical research can shed light on enhancement enthusiasm
- 18: Stephanie Bell, Jayne Lucke and Wayne Hall: Lessons for enhancement form the history of cocaine and amphetamine use
- 19: Wayne Hall and John Strang: Drug policy and the public good: evidence for effective interventions
About the author
Professor Ruud ter Meulen (1952) is psychologist and ethicist. He was Professor and Director at the Institute for Bioethics and the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. In 2005 he was appointed Chair for Ethics of Medicine and Director of the Centre for ethics in Medicine at the University of Bristol. He has directed a range of European projects in the field of biomedical ethics. He was co-ordinator of the ENHANCE project, dealing with the ethical, philosophical and social issues of enhancement technologies. He was also co-ordinator of the recently finished European EPOCH project on the role of ethics in public policy-making on new biotechnologies, with enhancement as a case, and of the European SYBHEL project on the ethical, legal and social issues of synthetic biology as applied to human health. He has published about 150 articles, book chapters and edited volumes on a range of topics in bioethics.
Wayne Hall is a Professor and Director of the Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research at the University of Queensland. He was formerly: an NHMRC Australia Fellow in addiction neuroethics at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research and the University of Queensland Brain Institute (2009-2014); Professor of Public Health Policy, School of Population Health, UQ (2005-2009); Director of the Office of Public Policy and Ethics at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (2001-2005) at the University of Queensland; and Director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW (1994-2001). He has advised the World Health Organization on: the health effects of cannabis use; the effectiveness of drug substitution treatment; the contribution of illicit drug use to the global burden of disease; and the ethical implications of genetic and neuroscience research on addiction.
Dr Ahmed Dahir Mohamed is a registered psychologist, neuroscientist and author. He was the recipient of the Emerging Psychologist Award from the 2016 International Congress of Psychology in Yokohama, Japan for his work on the effects of mindfulness in young people. He was formerly a post-doctoral fellow in Developmental Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience at the School of Psychology University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. He obtained his doctorate in Psychology from the University of Cambridge, where the focus of his thesis was how to enhance cognition in young people. Dr. Mohamed was a recognized DPhil student at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, University of Oxford. In 2013, he was a visiting neuroscience and ethics fellow at St Cross College, University of Oxford. Dr. Mohamed holds a first class honours degree in psychology from the University of Reading and he became a full chartered member of the British Psychological Society in 2013 and elected associate fellow in 2015.
Summary
This book critically explores and analyses the scientific and ethical debates surrounding cognitive enhancers. Including contributions from neuroscientists, neuropsychopharmacologists, ethicists, philosophers, public health professionals, and policy researchers, the book offers a multidisciplinary, critical consideration of this topic.
