Yesterday's New York Times magazine piece, Savant for a Day, describes how transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is not only being tested as a potential treatment for mental illnesses like depression but also as a way to enhance human cognition.

Allan Snyder, Chair of the Centre for the Mind has performed "TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills."

Like most emerging neurotechnologies, TMS shows promise but there is a long road ahead.