Thursday, March 08, 2007
Dream a little dream of me......
On a Monday night this fall I heard a fascinating talk by Penn researcher Martha Farah. As part of the Penn Science Cafe she spoke about how our society is manipulating the brain. Her talk was officially entitled, "The Human Brain v2.0: How Neuroscience Is Poised to Transform Humanity".
I was most interested in her discussion of a drug called modafinil, which is widely prescribed for narcolepsy. It seems that people without narcolepsy can take it the drug and go without sleep with little side effect. At least, I should say that no one has tried going without sleep for long stretches of time. Rather, it appears that for one or two nights, it is possible to take the drug and pull an all-nighter without crashing.
Dr Farah spoke about the ways in which people could abuse the drug. Students, pilots, soliders, etc. What would it be like to be a work environment where everyone took the drug and was more productive? How could you still abstain from it? It’s the everyday equivalent of the recent doping scandals in many sports.
And we’re still waiting for the sleep revolution.
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