Sort of like over-clocking a CPU, is there anyway to juice the nervous system (parts central, peripheral, and somatic) in order to dramatically increase action/reaction times and cognitive thought.
I imagine it like a drug that might increase the flow of information from your peripheral system, as well as central, and increasing the processing of it all in the brain. The ideal result would be a world that would appear to be unfolding in slow motion, thereby gaining you increased speed and thought, tantamount to getting stuff done quicker.
Also, imagine playing video games or sports (or sex). Or even just wanting a six hour party to “last” longer (assuming everyone’s ‘juiced’).
The speed of a nerve message along is determined by the speed at which the ‘action potential’ moves along the neuron’s surface. That, as we all know (or at least those who took anatomy and physiology) is determined by the interchange of sodium and potassium ions across the cell membrane. While I suppose it’s imaginable that some modification could increase the speed at which the ions cross the membrane, it’s far-fetched.
Of course there’s also the transmission of messages between neurons, which is handled by an array of different neurotransmitters. While we already have drugs (anti-depressants) that meddle with the level of neurotransmitters, it’s again far-fetched to imagine any drug that would substantially change the rate.
As best as can be understood, the human consciousness is emergent from a range of chemical and electrical interactions. Whilst the individual processes can only be tinkered with around the edges, there are possibilities for alternate designs.
Pathways from selected nerve endings to the brain - direct fibre-optics is probably the way to go here. Exactly how much this would help without replacing the sensor nerves as well would be the limiting factor. You may need to replace the skin/eyes etc with faster sensors, and current state of the art in pressure/optical sensors aren’t a big improvement over what we already have.
Replacement of the consciousnes hardware in the brain. We can certainly do individual operations faster (maths processing is a good example) but current state of the art can’t replicate the conscious symbol processing. There isn’t actually good evidence one way or the other about what is achievable. It may be that any design using faster components becomes so large or complex that it has design-induced delays that outweigh the individual component advantages.
Perhaps you could, in some way, enhance or artificially reproduce the effect myelin has on action potential conduction – in a myelinated axon, action potentials propagate through a process known as saltation (they ‘hop’ instead of moving continuously), leading to a faster transmission.
Whether or not this would lead to the desired effect of speeding up thought processes, and even then, whether or not that would lead to experiencing a given time subjectively as longer, I don’t know, though.
This New Scientist article on time perception discusses both how the brain perceives events in time, and discusses the use of rapid click trains that appear to increase cognitive processing rates. Techniques like this may be able to improve perception/cognition rates - whether physical reaction times can also be improved has yet to be determined.
To boil it down, everything involved in the nervous system is a chemical reaction. Those reactions follow hard and fast rules. So if you want to change the speed, you need to change the reaction in some way. That will never be as simple to do as taking a pill or injecting a drug. You’d have to fundamentally redesign the system in some way.