Sharing his experiences he said the latest generation of smart drugs like modafinil have shown in trials to have a significant effect on cognition. He said, “This all sounds a bit science fiction, but it is happening.”
Using himself as a guinea-pig he found that by taking modafinil and using a very low strength basic electrical brain stimulator, he managed to improve the abstract reasoning test given by Mensa by10 points on his previous score.
Although he did not recommend that the audience carry out similar experiments he pointed out that so-called smart pills are being used by students to enhance their academic performance.
He said when writing his book The Genius Within: Smart pills, Brain Hacks and Adventures in Intelligence it became obvious that the increased use of smart pills raises ethical questions, as well as questions around cognitive improvement.
If you missed this you might like to go to event 83 The Synthetic Age at 10am