Mental failings.

• Position: Editor's Note

I'M NOT YET 40, but I'm already losing my mind.

Or parts of it, at any rate. I sometimes call one of my sons by the other's name, even though there's a seven-year gap between them. I occasionally stop to remember phone numbers that I've been dialing for years. I increasingly find myself struggling to recall bits of information that never used to prompt such brain lock.

Before you start feeling too sorry for me--or too smug--remember that we're all in this leaking boat together. Memory loss and other elements of diminished mental capacity are the brutal, universal facts of aging; like death and taxes, they eventually happen to all of us.

That's precisely why this month's cover story, "The Battle for Your Brain" (page 24), is so important. reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey (note to self: double-check that name) reports that we're rapidly entering a "dawning age of neuroscience" that "promises not just new enhancements for Alzheimer's and other brain diseases but enhancements to improve memory, boost intellectual acumen, and fine-tune our emotional responses." Widely used drugs such as Prozac, Ritalin, and Zoloft provide a hint of what's coming--a future in which we will be able to manipulate our minds and moods more effectively than ever before.

This burgeoning field requires a wide-ranging conversation about "neuroethics." That discussion is already underway but has so far mostly ignored the desires of the people who may choose to avail themselves of such enhancements. As Bailey points out, that's because "so many of the field's critics...hope to restrict that autonomy in various ways." While critics worry that such advances will undermine personal...