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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 12 of 12. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by wcfrench on October 1, 2003, at 19:29:04
Is it possible that a medicine can actually make you smarter? I know they can heal your head and make you function better. But does medicine simply unlock your potential, or could it make you actually smarter beyond your original potential? This is interesting, I have been wondering about it for a long time. Having experienced some of the most clarity, ease of writing essays, and finding solutions to problems that once seemed unsolvable, I sometimes wonder if the pill makes me smarter or if it was always in me. I know others of you out there have experienced the same thing, so does anyone know what the answer is?
Posted by Pfinstegg on October 1, 2003, at 20:30:03
In reply to Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by wcfrench on October 1, 2003, at 19:29:04
Wonderful question! I read of a study done recently at Yale in which students got higher IQ scores after TMS.
Pfinstegg
Posted by Sebastian on October 1, 2003, at 21:25:38
In reply to Re: Can a medicine make you smarter? » wcfrench, posted by Pfinstegg on October 1, 2003, at 20:30:03
What is TMS?
Yes, my best scores in school came when I took meds. I am still in disbelive. Straight 4.0, perfect score for almost 2 years. I sliped and got a 'B', only one, on my last semester.
Sebastian
Posted by stjames on October 1, 2003, at 22:47:43
In reply to Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by wcfrench on October 1, 2003, at 19:29:04
Depression will make thoughts slow. Hard to say if the meds just return you to normal or actually improve on normal. Many have been depressed so long
they have forgotten what normal is.
Posted by rianny on October 2, 2003, at 2:37:26
In reply to Re: Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by Sebastian on October 1, 2003, at 21:25:38
> What is TMS?
>
> Yes, my best scores in school came when I took meds. I am still in disbelive. Straight 4.0, perfect score for almost 2 years. I sliped and got a 'B', only one, on my last semester.
>
> Sebastian
What meds have you taken Sebastian? My marks dropped rapidly after getting these OCD+SP symptoms. I used to get A or A+. God, I want myself back.
Posted by wcfrench on October 2, 2003, at 14:30:33
In reply to Re: Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by rianny on October 2, 2003, at 2:37:26
In college I began putting forth effort (much different from high school) and I did exceptionally well. After I got depressed, things fell and it was hard to stay in the A range, sometimes a B was hard. When I took antipsychotics, I had visual thought stimulation and did Calculus extremely fast and was able to map out problems without using paper. I never experienced it to that degree before, nor did I experience so much visual thought and memory. I definitely did better than I had done even before I was depressed, so it leads me to believe strong medicines can do that. I think it is also possible that we still get smarter when we're depressed, though we don't feel it. Maybe once we feel much better, we actually realize how much we've learned and can apply it efficiently. But, as I've heard with Ritalin or Adderal, I've felt almost like I could do anything so easily.. art, writing, music, and I really could, but perhaps my abilities were just handicapped before, in a sense. They say that people that are bipolar often have exceptional capabilities, probably more so, I feel, when the resources are able to be tapped into. I know psychedelic drugs and LSD can cause your senses to be heightened, such as hearing more depth in music, etc. So parts of our brain become amplified in a sense.. or they create additional brain cells if the area is healing? It's so hard to say if drugs just bring out things already inside of us, or if they actually spark things in our head that have never been available before. I think it all boils down to using your brain and your body as efficiently as possible, since it has already been proven that antidepressants can help regrow brain cells. But isn't being smarter than before actually making you smarter? It seems like I answered my own question, but I don't really feel like it's the right answer. Regrowing or stimulating new hippocampal growth seems like it would be on the borderline of being called "making you smarter."
There are a number of articles on this, now that I've looked, and they all seem to point toward Alzheimer medicine to help boost memory. Nootropic drugs can improve communication between the hemispheres of the brain, boost brain-oxygen levels, and release chemicals that are found in chocolate, and you're in love. Some medicines can improve a person's skill for empathy and 'introspective self-knowledge.'
This might sound crazy, but it seems to me that everything we are finding (medicine that can bring forth superior attributes in a person and put them to their complete and ultimate potential).. all of this is found here on Earth. Recently I've been seeing more and more stories on scientists being able to harness the attributes that animals have to use it to better our own species. (such as spider silk, spider leg hair, bat venom) It seems like everything we would ever need to become a perfect world is right here on Earth, if we can find it and figure out how to use it. It would take a long time, of course, to find everything and to put it together and tweak it so that everyone could become their fully conscious and enlightened state. Some wouldn't agree with a utopian concept, except those of us that have been there, where life's answers are simple and realize that no one should ever (or want to) do wrong to another person, know that if everyone in the world felt that way, the world _would_ be perfect. We were put on this planet, in whatever way you believe, and everything we could ever need is probably on it too.
Posted by wcfrench on October 2, 2003, at 14:38:57
In reply to Re: Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by wcfrench on October 2, 2003, at 14:30:33
Could you see, a few hundred years from now in a high school history class... "It was 400 years ago, back in 2220, when humans first discovered smart drugs. This changed the course of human history and brought us to the society and mindset that we have today. Before this, humans were chaotic, suicidal, insane, and blindly harmed killed and killed their own kind. They lived in madness, yet suffered and labored to desperately improve their quality life. Because of these people, the human race truly changed into what we know today. And for that, we owe our ancestors."
Posted by rianny on October 2, 2003, at 16:28:42
In reply to Re: Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by wcfrench on October 2, 2003, at 14:38:57
What was your diagnosis, and what meds did you take?
> Could you see, a few hundred years from now in a high school history class... "It was 400 years ago, back in 2220, when humans first discovered smart drugs. This changed the course of human history and brought us to the society and mindset that we have today. Before this, humans were chaotic, suicidal, insane, and blindly harmed killed and killed their own kind. They lived in madness, yet suffered and labored to desperately improve their quality life. Because of these people, the human race truly changed into what we know today. And for that, we owe our ancestors."
Posted by DSCH on October 3, 2003, at 11:22:11
In reply to Re: Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by wcfrench on October 2, 2003, at 14:38:57
> Could you see, a few hundred years from now in a high school history class... "It was 400 years ago, back in 2220, when humans first discovered smart drugs. This changed the course of human history and brought us to the society and mindset that we have today. Before this, humans were chaotic, suicidal, insane, and blindly harmed killed and killed their own kind. They lived in madness, yet suffered and labored to desperately improve their quality life. Because of these people, the human race truly changed into what we know today. And for that, we owe our ancestors."
Read some K. Eric Drexler, Ray Kurzweil, and some essays by Vernor Vinge ("singularity"). ;-)
One red letter date is Feb. 21, 1953. DNA is recognized as a double helix structure by Watson and Crick.
Another red letter date is Dec. 29, 1959, when Richard Feynman gave this talk... http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html
One more would be in 1941, when Konrad Zuse builds the first functional programmable computer. http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/zuse.html (Zuse is also the first to concieve of the whole universe as a cellular mesh of automata in 1967)
(Yes, this is Social Babbling) :-)
Posted by Sebastian on October 3, 2003, at 12:16:16
In reply to Re: Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by rianny on October 2, 2003, at 2:37:26
For my first semester,I was taking zyprexa only. Second semester I added celexa. Final semester I added wellbutrin sr. I atribute the success to zyprexa.
Sebastian
Posted by krybrahaha on October 4, 2003, at 1:04:43
In reply to Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by wcfrench on October 1, 2003, at 19:29:04
I have been taking Luvox for several months and I have noticed I am able to focus better and it has seemed to improve my memory some.
Posted by chewy on October 4, 2003, at 2:28:22
In reply to Re: Can a medicine make you smarter?, posted by krybrahaha on October 4, 2003, at 1:04:43
If drugs can push an athlete to perform beyond potential, then I suppose the mind can be streatched also.
I'm not sure I want to learn much faster than I already do. It might cut into my TV time!great question though. I'm going to pose it to my drinking buddies! Go Cubs!
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