Trends in Augmentation of Human Performance – serie

Cognitive enhancement is the use of drugs, biotechnological strategies or other means by healthy individuals aiming at the improvement of cognitive functions such as vigilance, concentration or memory without any medical need.

For ‘Recent Progress in Brain and Cognitive Engineering’Brain and Cognitive Engineering is a converging study field to derive a better understanding of cognitive information processing in the human brain, to develop “human-like” and neuromorphic artificial intelligent systems and to help predict and analyze brain-related diseases. The key concept of Brain and Cognitive Engineering is to understand the Brain, to interface the Brain, and to engineer the Brain. It could help us to understand the structure and the key principles of high-order information processing on how the brain works, to develop interface technologies between a brain and external devices and to develop artificial systems that  can ultimately mimic human brain functions. The convergence of behavioral, neuroscience and engineering research could lead us to advance health informatics and personal learning, to enhance virtual reality and healthcare systems, and to “reverse engineer” some brain functions and build cognitive robots.In this book, four different recent research directions are presented: Non-invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces, Cognitive- and Neural-rehabilitation Engineering, Big Data Neurocomputing, Early Diagnosis and Prediction of Neural Diseases. We cover numerous topics ranging from smart vehicles and online EEG analysis, neuroimaging for Brain-Computer Interfaces, memory implantation and rehabilitation, big data computing in cultural aspects and cybernetics to brain disorder detection. Hopefully this will provide a valuable reference for researchers in medicine, biomedical engineering, in industry and academia for their further investigations and be inspiring to those who seek the foundations to improve techniques and understanding of the Brain and Cognitive Engineeringresearch field.

Cognitive enhancement is the use of drugs, biotechnological strategies or other means by healthy individuals aiming at the improvement of cognitive functions such as vigilance, concentration or memory without any medical need. In particular, the use of pharmacological substances (caffeine, prescription drugs or illicit drugs) has received considerable attention during the last few years. Currently, however, little is known concerning the use of cognitive enhancers, their effects in healthy individuals and the place and function of cognitive enhancement in everyday life. The purpose of the book is to give an overview of the current research on cognitive enhancement and to provide in-depth insights into the interdisciplinary debate on cognitive enhancement.

This book focuses on the results from the strategic alliance between Neuroscience and Robotics that help the scientific community to better understand the brain as well as design robotic devices and algorithms for interfacing humans and robots.

Neuro-robotics is one of the most multidisciplinary fields of the last decades, fusing information and knowledge from neuroscience, engineering and computer science. This book focuses on the results from the strategic alliance between Neuroscience and Robotics that help the scientific community to better understand the brain as well as design robotic devices and algorithms for interfacing humans and robots. The first part of the book introduces the idea of neuro-robotics, by presenting state-of-the-art bio-inspired devices. The second part of the book focuses on human-machine interfaces for performance augmentation, which can seen as augmentation of abilities of healthy subjects or assistance in case of the mobility impaired. The third part of the book focuses on the inverse problem, i.e. how we can use robotic devices that physically interact with the human body, in order (a) to understand human motor control and (b) to provide therapy to neurologically impaired people or people with disabilities.