Abstract
Recent advances in neuroscience have paved the way to innovative applications that cognitively augment and enhance humans in a variety of contexts. This paper aims at providing a snapshot of the current state of the art and a motivated forecast of the most likely developments in the next two decades. Firstly, we survey the main neuroscience technologies for both observing and influencing brain activity, which are necessary ingredients for human cognitive augmentation. We also compare and contrast such technologies, as their individual characteristics (e.g., spatio-temporal resolution, invasiveness, portability, energy requirements, and cost) influence their current and future role in human cognitive augmentation. Secondly, we chart the state of the art on neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation, keeping an eye both on the applications that already exist and those that are emerging or are likely to emerge in the next two decades. Particularly, we consider applications in the areas of communication, cognitive enhancement, memory, attention monitoring/enhancement, situation awareness and complex problem solving, and we look at what fraction of the population might benefit from such technologies and at the demands they impose in terms of user training. Thirdly, we briefly review the ethical issues associated with current neuroscience technologies. These are important because they may differentially influence both present and future research on (and adoption of) neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation: an inferior technology with no significant ethical issues may thrive while a superior technology causing widespread ethical concerns may end up being outlawed. Finally, based on the lessons learned in our analysis, using past trends and considering other related forecasts, we attempt to forecast the most likely future developments of neuroscience technology for human cognitive augmentation and provide informed recommendations for promising future research and exploitation avenues.
Highlights
Human enhancement refers to a very broad range of techniques and approaches aimed at augmenting body or cognitive functions, through performance-enhancing drugs, prosthetics, medical implants, human-computer teaming, etc., that result in improved characteristics and capabilities, sometimes beyond the existing human range (Moore, 2008)
Among these is the degree of invasiveness—i.e., to what extent a technology requires introduction of instruments into the body—as well as other practical factors, including how portable or expensive technologies are, which influence their usability in everyday life for human cognitive augmentation
SCPs, Event-Related Desynchronization (ERD), and mental-imagery Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are fundamentally based on biofeedback principles and are not dependent on external stimuli, in the way in which Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)-based and State Visually Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) BCIs are
Summary
Human enhancement refers to a very broad range of techniques and approaches aimed at augmenting body or cognitive functions, through performance-enhancing drugs, prosthetics, medical implants, human-computer teaming, etc., that result in improved characteristics and capabilities, sometimes beyond the existing human range (Moore, 2008). Our aim here is providing a snapshot of the current state of the art of neuroscience technologies for human cognitive enhancement and a motivated forecast of their most likely developments in the two decades. By cognitive enhancement we mean the improvement of the processes of acquiring/generating knowledge and understanding the world around us Such processes encompass attention, the formation of knowledge, memory, judgement and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem solving and decision making, as well as the comprehension and production of language. The formation of knowledge, memory, judgement and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem solving and decision making, as well as the comprehension and production of language For these reasons, unlike previous efforts, here we choose to review applications of these technologies by the cognitive function they augment (more on this below). Based on the lessons learnt in our analysis and using past trends as predictors of future ones, in section 5 we attempt to forecast the most likely future developments of neuroscience technology and provide informed recommendations for promising future research and exploitation avenues
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