A Pill To Make Us Smarter

Ever seen that movie “Limitless” in which Bradley Cooper takes some kind of a drug and become super-smart with the ability to predict and calculate everything that’s going to happen?

Well, that’s no longer a thing of the imagination, because a group of researchers recently discovered the key secret to making people smarter.

Back To The Roots

For centuries now, medicine has strived towards prolonging life and finding cures for all diseases – in short, making us perfect and indestructible.

Speaking of perfect, it seems like we can now achieve the perfect mind by figuratively turning its world upside-down.

In essence, becoming smarter means absorbing new knowledge and skills. Researchers from Stanford University had an idea – put the mind into a state where it can learn thing more quickly.

To do so, they needed to revert the mind to that of a child, since humans are best learners at young age.

While experimenting on mice, the team found out that there is a protein that stabilizes neural connections. In mice that protein is the PirB molecule, while what we have is called LilrB2.

Technically, the more stable the neural connections are, the less ability we have to learn new things. Therefore, if we were to rewire our brain to a more child-like state, we should simply repress LilrB2.

Pure Discovery

The mind of a child is in science referred to as “plastic,” because it’s easier to mold and adapt to new experiences and knowledge. And as we get older, our minds become less adept at learning because our neural stability strengthens.

For a child, everything is new and interesting, and the state of its mind is solely based around discovery. Through targeting and suppressing LilrB2, the researchers are able to turn our minds bad to our beginnings.

All that remains to be discovered is what form will this drug take and how long will its effect last?