Brain boosting can improve your memory, reflexes, learning and more – but is it ethical?

Electrical or mechanical stimulation can improve brain function, and helps people suffering from brain injuries or disorders such as depression or schizophrenia

A researcher says these techniques can be used in healthy people too, to make them happier or improve brain performance, but it may not be right to do so

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A scientist conducts a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) experiment on a patient. TMS is a form of brain boosting used on people with brain injury or brain disorders, but it could boost brain performance in healthy people too, if society decides that’s a good thing, a researcher says. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 12:00am, 22 Aug 2021Updated: 12:02pm, 22 Aug 2021

Can healthy brains benefit from brain boosting?

Although life as a cyborg is some way off, we are gradually integrating technology with our bodies to improve our health. Brain boosting, which involves electrical or magnetic stimulation of the brain to improve cognitive performance, is now a relatively common procedure to help patients who suffer from brain injury or brain disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.

Speaking at a recent online conference organised by New Scientist Live, an offshoot of the UK’s New Scientist magazine, Nick Davis, a senior lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK, described how healthy people could benefit from brain boosting, and the ethical problems that could arise.

There are pharmacological ways, using drugs or so-called nootropics, to improve brain performance. But the most interesting developments in brain boosting – which is more commonly referred to as cognitive enhancement – are happening in the mechanical field. Instead of using drugs, the brain is stimulated using electricity or magnetics. Both techniques work by increasing the number of neurons that are firing in a targeted area of the brain.

A patient at a mental hospital undergoes electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the 1950s. The treatment uses electric pulses to influence brain activity and improve cognitive performance. Photo: Carl Purcell/Three Lions/Getty Images

In the case of treatment for depression, these techniques are used to boost the number of neurons which fire in the brain regions associated with mood. “We can use magnetic pulses to influence brain activity through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and we can also use electrical stimulation (electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT),” Davis said.