The Future

This is a perfect opportunity for the same technologies that are a source of the cognition crisis to play a positive role in enhancing what makes us human, rather than diminishing us.

Mobile technologies are now being developed that wield a wide spectrum of sophisticated sensors. Touch screens, accelerometers, GPS, voice recognizers, heart rate trackers, facial expression detectors, eye motion capturers, and brain activity recorders (e.g., EEG) can be utilized to collect and interpret both passive and active data about us. This technology is ideally positioned to serve as the foundation for the next generation of cognition assessments, allowing us to better and more deeply understand ourselves in the real-world and in real-time.

Tech-based assessments could be optimized to yield a much more nuanced perspective of our abilities, such as how facets of cognition are stable traits, while others are fluid states that dynamically shift with our environment and physiology (e.g., intoxication, fatigue and stress). They could allow us to explore the eddies and tides in cognition on our journey from childhood to our senior years, and in response to life’s unpredictable joys and traumas.

Of course, this approach needs to advance with careful attention to protect sensitive data, as well as ethical considerations to understand and preempt its abuse. Obtaining this knowledge about ourselves will be also coupled with an inevitable burden to overcome deeply rooted biases that exist around cognition. For some, there will be an unsettling concern about tracking attention, memory, and decision making, which does not apply to testing cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure. This issue parallels the major stigma that exists for mental health disorders as being reflective of the quality of a person rather than a medical condition.

There seems to be a natural inclination to think of cognition as a reflection of “who we are” more than other aspects of our biological functioning. We might refer to someone as being inattentive, and as having high blood pressure. The former is something that defines them as a person, often accompanied by moral judgment, while the latter as something that is inflicted upon them and viewed as a simple biological “fact.” These biases need to go.

[T]he same technologies that are a source of the cognition crisis can play a positive role in enhancing what makes us human.

Once we obtain a more precise understanding of our cognition, the next goal is to enhance it. Before diving into the opportunity for technology to help with this, it is important to recognize that there is plenty we can do by refining our daily activities. Extensive research has revealed benefits on cognition from more informed decisions about physical exercise, cognitive challenge, social interactions, sleep, nutrition, music, dance, and time in nature.

Some of the most ancient and formalized practices that we humans engage in are at their very core cognition enhancing exercises: mindfulness practices and contemplative traditions. Promising research supports the beneficial effects of meditation on mood, attention, compassion, and stress management.

For too long wellness and medicine have been considered distinct disciplines, and healthcare has essentially been sickcare. A stronger scientific foundation supporting the benefits of these approaches will allow us to finally break down barriers that have thwarted advances in preventative treatments. Empirical evidence supporting these practices needs to become indistinguishable from those generated for regulated mainstream solutions.

Our challenge now is to figure out how we can use technology to create powerful experiences that maximally harness our brain’s plasticity to enhance our cognition, refine our behavior and ultimately elevate our minds. Clearly, not all experiences are created equal. The most effective type of experience that can accomplish such a high-level goal is the closed-loop experience.

Closed-loop systems are currently used in many physical applications; even our home appliances, such as thermostats and dryers, use closed-loop designs by sensing temperature and moisture to determine how much heat to supply. But its use is almost non-existent for biological applications. And as described, both our education and medical systems utilize open-loop systems.

Our challenge is to figure out how to use technology to create powerful experiences that elevate our minds.

A technology-based, closed-loop approach can be used to generate an experience that activates brain networks in a selective manner (that’s how the brain works) and then applies constant pressure to the network via interactive challenges that drive the brain’s plasticity to optimize its function over time.

Imagine playing a video game where data about you in the moment is being collected with sensor technology — performance metrics, emotional responses, body movements, brain activity — and this is used in real-time to guide the environment you are experiencing, personalizing both challenges and rewards to improve your cognition. It would be like sparring with the ultimate personal cognition trainer.

Many laboratories and companies around the world are actively pursuing this vision right now. This includes my own efforts in technology incubation and scientific research into how closed-loop video games may serve as cognitive enhancement tools that advance a new approach: digital medicine and digital education. This re-imagination of non-invasive, affordable, safe and accessible technology — smartphones, tablets, wearable physiological devices, motion capture and interactive media — as instruments to better understand and improve our minds has great potential to address the cognition crisis.

Take all of this one step further into the future and picture the role that innovations in artificial intelligence (A.I.) and virtual reality (VR) technologies can offer here. Now imagine yourself deeply immersed in a multi-sensory virtual environment where your full-body interactivity is coordinated by an A.I. that knows you better and deeper in that moment than any human being would be capable of, including yourself. It would create for you a perfectly targeted, closed-loop experience aimed at enhancing and maintaining all aspects of your cognition at a high-level throughout your life — picking up on subtle shifts in perception, mood, aggression, attention, and memory to strengthen your brain’s function by driving its natural plasticity. This would not be designed to control you, but rather to give you control over your own mind and prevent (or at least delay) the slippery slide into major depression, anxiety, ADHD, and dementia.

What better use is there for A.I. than in enhancing H.I. — human intelligence? If we are creative and forward-thinking, we can achieve what may be technology’s ultimate promise, the establishment of an environment that fosters the next phase in the evolution of the human mind.

What better use is there for A.I. than in enhancing H.I. — human intelligence?

Advances in medicine over the last hundred years have resulted in an elevation of the overall health of humanity to a level that far exceeds what has ever been attained in the past. Technology has been a big part of this success. But for our species to continue to thrive and flourish in this increasingly complex world, we must engage in the difficult task of turning our lens inward and looking carefully and honestly for cracks in the mirror.

A crisis is a time of difficulty when important decisions must be made to avert future disaster. When it comes to the functioning of our brains and minds, the time has arrived. The status of our cognition on a global scale is in trouble — and getting worse, especially for our children. For too long we have maintained the illusion that we are separate from our environment. Now is the time to take stock of what we truly value in being human, embrace it and mend our broken minds.