3 ms·

"I can't see much of a downside for this potential drug" Really? The brain is one of the most complex organs in the human body. It is also a finite resource. T

by TrevorJ 17y ago

"I can't see much of a downside for this potential drug" Really? The brain is one of the most complex organs in the human body. It is also a finite resource. There is a very high probability that increasing performance on one area will have complex side effects in other areas.

yan 17y ago
I think the author of the blog post meant that given the drug a) works in humans and b) is determined to be 'safe' by some level of metrics, she doesn't see the downside to remembering visual memories for much longer. I don't think it's fair to leave it to bloggers to assess the dangers of a neurological drug.
- mquander 17y ago
  I agree that you've probably nailed the intent, but it makes the statement seem rather vapid in the first place. "If the drug [does this great thing] and has no destructive side effects, then I can't see much of a downside to it." Well, duh.
  - yan 17y ago
    No, I don't think it's obvious. We forget things for a reason; increasing the level of noise in the human mind doesn't just come with no side effects. Even if the drug works perfectly as intended, not having the ability to forget memories that are irrelevant can be a big disadvantage I'd think.
    - khafra 17y ago
      I don't think you can proceed from "we forget things" to "it's good that we forget things." We get cancer. However, a decade and a half on the internet is enough to convince me that the ability to let certain visual memories fade into oblivion is a good thing.
      - joeyo 17y ago
        There is fairly good evidence that inability to forget is at least correlated with cognitive and social deficits. For an overview see: http://books.google.com/books?id=BooNAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Mind+of+a+Mnemonist http://books.google.com/books?id=BooNAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Min...
tokenadult 17y ago
This would definitely be a drug for which the new FDA requirements of searching for psychiatric side effects during clinical trials would be of crucial importance. Quite a few drugs have turned out to have unexpected psychiatric side effects in recent years that didn't turn up during animal testing. Rimonabant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant is an example of a drug that at first sounded like it had no downside, only upside, when it was released, but it has been withdrawn from the market now that its dangerous side effects have been discovered. Rimonabant is not the only recent example like that. The human brain is a very complicated, interacting biochemical system, and drugs that were believed to be harmless have often been shown to have severe psychiatric side effects. Thanks to the other participants who have already mentioned examples of strong visual memory storage not having fully beneficial effects in actual patients.

by TrevorJ 17y ago

yan 17y ago

I think the author of the blog post meant that given the drug a) works in humans and b) is determined to be 'safe' by some level of metrics, she doesn't see the downside to remembering visual memories for much longer. I don't think it's fair to leave it to bloggers to assess the dangers of a neurological drug.

mquander 17y ago
I agree that you've probably nailed the intent, but it makes the statement seem rather vapid in the first place. "If the drug [does this great thing] and has no destructive side effects, then I can't see much of a downside to it." Well, duh.
- yan 17y ago
  No, I don't think it's obvious. We forget things for a reason; increasing the level of noise in the human mind doesn't just come with no side effects. Even if the drug works perfectly as intended, not having the ability to forget memories that are irrelevant can be a big disadvantage I'd think.
  - khafra 17y ago
    I don't think you can proceed from "we forget things" to "it's good that we forget things." We get cancer. However, a decade and a half on the internet is enough to convince me that the ability to let certain visual memories fade into oblivion is a good thing.
    - joeyo 17y ago
      There is fairly good evidence that inability to forget is at least correlated with cognitive and social deficits. For an overview see: http://books.google.com/books?id=BooNAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Mind+of+a+Mnemonist http://books.google.com/books?id=BooNAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Min...

tokenadult 17y ago

This would definitely be a drug for which the new FDA requirements of searching for psychiatric side effects during clinical trials would be of crucial importance. Quite a few drugs have turned out to have unexpected psychiatric side effects in recent years that didn't turn up during animal testing. Rimonabant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant is an example of a drug that at first sounded like it had no downside, only upside, when it was released, but it has been withdrawn from the market now that its dangerous side effects have been discovered. Rimonabant is not the only recent example like that. The human brain is a very complicated, interacting biochemical system, and drugs that were believed to be harmless have often been shown to have severe psychiatric side effects. Thanks to the other participants who have already mentioned examples of strong visual memory storage not having fully beneficial effects in actual patients.