Boost for Brain Boosters

An increasing number of students and hard-working employees are taking pills prescribed for A.D.H.D.—such as Adderall and Ritalin—to enhance their performance. Margaret Talbot’s report on "neuroenhancing” in this week’s New Yorker explores everything from the lies people tell their doctors to the growing black markets on college campuses. While cognitive enhancers are associated with our winner-take-all, Blackberry-obsessed culture, they're most common in a certain demographic: white males at New England schools who belong to a fraternity and have a G.P.A of 3.0 or lower. It’s unclear how neuroenhancing is going to take a toll in the long term, but for now, there’s an “increasing number of Americans who are performing daily experiments on their own brains.”