Neurosicence/Biology Question
A pharmaceutical company is developing a new drug which up-regulates cholinergic signaling in the brain (e.g. causes more ACh to be produced and released). They believe this will work as a general âintelligence boosterâ and make people who take it smarter. Their approach is based on scientific observations that cholinergic signaling is associated with attention and spatiotemporal memory formation, that damage to cholinergic nuclei in the basal forebrain interfere with the ocular dominance shift (which is a form of experience-dependent plasticity), that cholinergic neurons are some of the first to die in Alzheimerâs disease and presage intellectual decline, and on models suggesting that muscarinic signaling increases the contribution of intracortical projections associated with âthoughtâ as opposed to âsensory processingâ.
You are hired as a consultant for a venture capital firm that is considering investing in this drug. What is the strongest single argument you can make for why this drug is unlikely to work as advertised (i.e. unlikely to make people that take it smarter)?
Neurosicence/Biology Question
A pharmaceutical company is developing a new drug which up-regulates cholinergic signaling in the brain (e.g. causes more ACh to be produced and released). They believe this will work as a general âintelligence boosterâ and make people who take it smarter. Their approach is based on scientific observations that cholinergic signaling is associated with attention and spatiotemporal memory formation, that damage to cholinergic nuclei in the basal forebrain interfere with the ocular dominance shift (which is a form of experience-dependent plasticity), that cholinergic neurons are some of the first to die in Alzheimerâs disease and presage intellectual decline, and on models suggesting that muscarinic signaling increases the contribution of intracortical projections associated with âthoughtâ as opposed to âsensory processingâ.
You are hired as a consultant for a venture capital firm that is considering investing in this drug. What is the strongest single argument you can make for why this drug is unlikely to work as advertised (i.e. unlikely to make people that take it smarter)?
