Cognitive enhancement : toward the integration of theory and practice

Cognitive enhancement reflects the use of any (legitimate) means such as for example food supplements to reach one’s personal best, and has gained great interest over the past years. The increasing costs of the welfare offer one explanation, the second is that both Eastern and Western societies are continuously driven towards more individualism pushing the idea that an individual is the director of his or her own life. In this dissertation, I attempted to explain how and why enhancement techniques such as brain stimulation, videogaming, and food supplements (e.g. tyrosine and tryptophan) are promising and inexpensive ways to enhance cognition. That is, clear ideas about the underlying mechanisms of these effects are needed before these techniques can be applied outside the field of science. Our findings have important societal and economic implications and go hand-in-hand with the ideological individualistic trend in society. More research is needed in order to gain better insights into the underlying mechanisms and the role of individual differences in modulating the observed effects. However, the discussed techniques do have promising potential, not only in possibly delaying cognitive decline in elderly, but also enhancing (social) cognitive functioning and mental well-being in healthy humans.