Cognitive Enhancement And Bioinformatics

Question

[Bioinformaics Beginner]

I was wondering if there are any ways in which Bioinformatics tools could help in Human Cognitive enhancement. Even if the way is too vague, or futuristic please throw in some ideas. If there are already some topics ongoing I would like to know about them.

Edit: What I really wanted to know is, if pipelines exist for refinement of the work being done towards cognitive enhancement. For example, it is known that GABA antagonists have a role in such enhancement Paper here. Could the present databases tell more about the involved proteins, with existing knowledge? Its a very broad and vague questions, but I would like to invest my spare time in pursuing a good idea if I find one.

[Neilfws]

Well, if bioinformatics is "tools for analysing biological data" and cognitive research generates biological data then sure, there are "ways in which bioinformatics could help." This question is much too vague; please try to improve it or it will be closed on that basis.

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

(After you edited the question) What your describing in your comment is called "Systems biology" : for example, see http://www.reactome.org , http://www.biopax.org/ http://bio2rdf.org/ etc...

[Michael Schubert]

I raise Pierre an sbml.org and biomodels.net

Answer 1

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

You could start with an ontology: http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/45927

The Cognitive Atlas is a collaborative knowledge building project that aims to develop an ontology that characterizes the state of current thought in cognitive science. It defines a set of mental concepts along with a set of mental tasks, and the measurement relations between those classes.

http://www.cognitiveatlas.org/

Answer 2

[Chris Evelo]

I think this: I think this: http://www.nickbostrom.com/cognitive.pdf probably describes what was meant by cognitive enhancement. Since the first description I read says something like "using software or hardware to improve the capacities of the human brain beyond what it would normally be able to do", I would say almost all of what we do in bioinformatics could fit that description of cognitive enhancement.