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Show Your Changing World The Salt Lake Tribune, Drugs, Diets May Boost Intelligence in Future Q. Will the humaa race become more intelligent In the future? A. There is no longer much doubt that human intelligence can be increased. The growing confidence in mans ability to increase his own intelligence arises from research in many widely different fields. Some approaches may ultimately fail, but there are so many projects under way that success seems assured. A few caveats are in order, however. Most research in human intelligence is at least somewhat controversial; psychologists have difficulty even agreeing on what intelligence is. Methods for increasing intelligence may have dangerous side effects. And increasing human intelligence may open a Pandoras box of new problems for society. That having been said, here are some of the future possibilities. Using drugs to boost human intelligence has long figured in the speculations of futurists. At the moment medical researchers are aiming mainly at developing drugs and special diets to aid young people who suffer from a condition that might impair the normal development of their intelligence and to prevent mental deterioration in the elderly. Already, drugs are indeed raising human intelligence to some degree. And there is some preliminary evidence that old people will become senile less quickly if they eat more lecithin, a constituent of some fats. An entirely different approach involves providing infants and children with a highly stimulating environment. A few years ago Venezuela established a national program to increase the intelligence of its people. New mothers in maternity hospitals were trained in ways to increase their babies IQs. In a Milwaukee area with a high incidence of feeblemindedness, a program that taught language and cognitive skills to both mothers and children succeeded in increasing the childrens IQs by more than 30 points in comparison with similar children who did not get this training. It now seems likely that if a concerted effort were made to raise the quality of the home environment during the very first years of childrens lives, a large number of future geniuses would result. Consider the example of the late anthropologist Margaret Mead. When she was an infant her mother, at the suggestion of psychologist William James, exposed little Margaret to numerous sensory stimuli colors, textures, pictures of great works of art, masterpieces of music. In the future, genetics may provide ways to insert an intelligenceboosting gene into an embryo. This could give a child a head start toward superior intelligence as an adult. Another genetic approach is to use sperm from men with superior intellects such as Nobel Prize winners to produce babies who presumably would inherit the paternal traits. Adults may be able to improve their intelligence through special courses that teach thinking as a skill. Edward de Bono, a British expert on the subject, points to the example of typists. They never develop the speed that they could if they would take the time to learn to use all their fingers. There is evidence that training in thinking skills can raise scores on many intelligence tests. Theoretically, another way to raise intelligence is through brain transplants removing the brain of a newly dead person of superior intelligence and placing it in the skull of a living person, perhaps one whose brain is defective. Already, scientists have succeeded in transplanting brain cells from one rat to another, enabling the recipient to regain lost mental functioning. Using such procedures on humans poses ethical, legal and practical problems. So for now medical researchers are interested in developing electronic prosthetic devices for the brain tiny computer chips and hair-thielectrodes that could substitute for lost brain cells. Experiments in this area suggest that it may also be possible to restore vision to people who are blind, heading to def persons and the use of their limbs to stroke victims. A certain type of brain cell glial cells, which are linked to memory might be grown in laboratories and inserted into brains that lack a sufficient quantity of these cells. This might at least increase a recipients ability to remember things and possibly could improve the entire functioning of the brain in some cases. Yet another way to increase human intelligence may be to link our brains to computers. It wont be necessary to insert any wires into our brains. New instruments can decipher electromagnetic signals coming from the brain; if you merely thought of a persons name, the computers memory would bring forth all kinds of information about that person. It could be displayed on a video screen. Eventually such data might be placed - ELECTRONIC TYPEWRITERS MODEL pcio $469 Its hard even to imagine the effect of all these efforts on our society. Intelligence is not the same as wisdom, much less saintliness. Many thieves and murderers have had superior intelligence and used it for evil purposes. Still, advances in the realm of human intelligence could eliminate the curse of mental retardation, and greater intelligence just might increase, however slightly, the general g of the worlds people. KX-E6-01 PCI 4 765 YOUR Canon np copiers NEW" CANON NP 115 HPCANNON LASER PRINTER well-bein- NP 115 COPIER Cash Editor's Note: If you have a question about the future that you would tike to tee answered In this column, send It to Edward Cornish, P.O. 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