SMARTS

A BBC article indicates that medical research continues to focus in on using "smart drugs" to enhance brain function. Depending on the source, humans only use 10 to 20 percent of their brains. Some compare brains to supercomputers (even though human functions at faster speeds). In trying to tap the inner (and allegedly bigger) computing power of the human brain, chemical alteration is the research to increase cognition.

Cognition is a suite of mental phenomena that includes memory, attention and executive functions, and any drug would have to enhance executive functions to be considered truly "smart." Executive functions occupy the higher levels of thought: reasoning, planning, directing attention to information that is relevant (and away from stimuli that aren’t), and thinking about what to do rather than acting on impulse or instinct. You activate executive functions when you tell yourself to count to 10 instead of saying something you may regret. They are what we use to make our actions moral and what we think of when we think about what makes us human.

 In one respect, the last paragraph sums up many of the elements contained in the LOST story lines and companion theories. There was mental altering experiments, drug use, stress tests through various jungle missions, physical pain and emotional manipulations and the alleged "vaccine" that was given to various characters.

The idea that the characters were part of a group trial on a cognition "smart drug" protocol could help explain and tie in the various theories surrounding mental attributes such as hallucinations, fantasy, dreams or even game theories. No one knows what would happen if science unlocks the full potential of human brain power.

The trailers for the new movie, Lucy, portends that higher mental cognition would unlock and unleash the ability to alter gravity, magnetics and matter. A human with supernatural abilities (not unlike the powers of a smoke monster). This is not to say that this movie is a riff on LOST or its story elements.

But the power of the mind is an untapped potential which could lead an individual down a fictional  path that seems perfectly real and complex.  This powerful mental journey could explain either the jungle world or the sideways realm or both.