Have you ever wondered why, despite being the class genius, you still feel the class buffoon is way smarter than you are? Oh yes, you score perfect on exams while everyone barely makes it to the passing grade, but outside the classroom everyone else seem smarter. Later in life you are the company's star programmer but, you stand in awe at how quick-witted that guy in the mail room is.

Sadly, sometimes your spectacular IQ score does not seem to manifest itself in your daily interactions with people around you. What you need actually is fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the measure of your skill at adapting to new or unfamiliar situations without relying on "crystallized intelligence" (or the skills that you have learned or memorized like grammar, math, or vocabulary). The good news is you can actually become smarter than you are right now. Neuroplasticity has debunked the belief that people are either "smart" or "not smart" - and the belief that you could not change it.

The truth is, a "smart" person can become less smart and someone who isn't could, with the right training and tools like iMusic, develop a blazing peak-performing brain. And, oh yes, you can also improve your IQ as a result. Martin Buschkuehl, a psychology researcher at the University of Bern in Switzerland, reports in his research which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that test subjects who were trained on a different memory task have shown a significant improvement on answering IQ tests.

Our brain is like a muscle (see "Brain Plasticity: Use it or Lose it"). In their report "Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory" Buschkuehl's team states that "the extent of gain in intelligence critically depends on the amount of training: the more training, the more improvement in fluid intelligence."

Dr. Thomas Elbert, professor of Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology at the University of Konstanz, Germany said that it was a belief 20 years ago that the brain develops only during childhood and then it stops growing. Dr. George Wittenberg at Wake Forest University Medical Center in Winstons-Salem, N.C. said that it was a belief that neuron formation for adults is only limited to specific areas of the brain.

Both experts say these beliefs have been proven otherwise: Brain plasticity happens 1) at the beginning of life as the immature brain organizes itself; 2) after a stroke or injury to adapt to changed circumstances, e.g. to compensate for lost or remaining functions and 3) through adulthood when you try to learn a new skill like juggling, memorize something, learn a new language, etc.

Let us take juggling, for example.

German researchers, led by Dr. Arne May at the University of Regernsburg in Germany, took 24 non-jugglers and divided them into two groups-one group to learn how to juggle for three months. The study showed that those who did not learn how to juggle did not show any difference in their fMRI over a three month period, while those who learned the new skill showed "an increase in gray matter in two areas of the brain involved in visual and motor activity..."

What makes this study understand us more about brain plasticity is their finding that when those who learned new skills stopped practicing for another three months, they "lost their gained brain power," and the enhanced regions of the brain decreased in volume. Use it, or lose it!

Our brain is like a muscle. We need to constantly exercise it. Just like our muscles, constant brain activity such as learning a new hobby, problem-solving, learning to play a musical instrument, etc., would provide growth benefits to the brain.

A little help from iMusic

There are a lot of instances when despite your desire to flex your "brain muscles," the going is tougher than you thought. Trying to learn new things, or even trying to concentrate becomes an uphill climb. iMusic can enhance neuroplasticity. It is a doctor-approved, and scientifically proven, brain-performance enhancer, through neuron and brainwave stimulation.

If you believe your brain is already giving you your peak performance, wait till you try iMusic. "Using iMusic is akin to plugging yourself into a machine that instantly transforms you into a productive, effective and energized android with amazing capabilities," Duncan Reynolds, a movie executive, says.

Brain plasticity becomes at its peak usefulness when one needs to relearn or compensate for some lost function due to injury, or to learn to maximize whatever is left. iMusic has been proven to help. David Solomonian, a coma and brain injury survivor, has this to say: "After a serious car accident left me in a coma for nearly 3 weeks with a serious brain injury, I awoke with almost no short term memory, terrible focus and diminished mental capability. I began using iMusic and the immediate improvements in my concentration, attentiveness, and mental acuity were powerful. After a week of use I could feel noticeable changes in my intelligence and mental sharpness... I was thinking faster, feeling more energized and even talking with more confidence. I am now an honors economics/mathematics university student and with iMusic, I know I am going to continue achieving and improving."

Two of the methods mostly preferred by management training workshops are the Merrill-Reid method and the Myers-Briggs personality test. Some of these schools of thought would try to simplify by being more descriptive like "powerful," "popular," "spirited," or "perfect." Some would guide you to your personality using different personalities from cartoon characters like Snoopy, or Winnie the Pooh, or Charlie Brown - no Loony Tunes character? It would be nice to know if your office bully's a Tasmanian Devil, or Daffy perhaps?

Medical NewsToday, reports a new development in the science of personality testing, (which will appear in the next issue of Nature Neuroscience) through the use of modern MRI. Michael X. Cohen and Dr. Bernd Weber at the University of Bonn conducted a study on the "wiring" of the striatum and the hippocampus (see this blog's previous reference to these brain areas at "Why your brain goes autopilot and makes you forget to drop off the dry cleaning").

The report states that innovation-oriented people have their striatum and hippocampus apparently interacting particularly well. The results of their tests suggest that people who have "(the) stronger connection between frontal lobe and ventral striatum, the more distinctive the desire for recognition by that person's environment.' This is not quite unexpected, Weber says, as "it is known that people with defects of the frontal lobe violate social norms more frequently."

Personality testing is a thriving $400 million a year-industry as businesses, from major corporations to mom-and-pop operations use these tests to assess prospective employee's strengths and weaknesses. While German scientists are conducting more studies to confirm these results, a personality test done through getting strapped inside a lab could be more compelling than test questionnaires. "Oh, I'm psychotic! I won't let them know -- I'll fake my written exam answers."

Note:  Check out Designer Brain Blog group's
wacky 'personality test' -- proceed to our discussion area and guess
the personality of the person above you (last picture posted) and find
out how others "see" you as they describe your personality based on
your picture.  This is nothing serious -- just for fun.  If you haven't
joined the group yet, now would be the best time.  Cheers!

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=43742314047

Ajan Raghunathan of psychology4all.com cites de Bono with the following list of most important misconceptions regarding thinking:

Misconception No.1:  The present education system develops and enhances thinking and so the more educated you are the better thinker you are.

Fact:

Actually, education suppresses free thinking. Creative thinking has almost no place in current education. Moreover, education even destroys creative thinking abilities by its over emphasis on logical thinking and critical thinking which are relatively lower types of human thinking.

Since argument, reasoning, and problem solving are given over importance, students develop a need to become correct and successful all the time. Again, because our present education system is so information oriented that it gives ready-made answers, this kills the student's natural tendency to explore, experiment and to experience. Thus, the highly educated person ends up having lesser ability to think creatively although he/she may have a lot of information at his/her disposal, and also have admirable abilities in logical and critical thinking.

Misconception No.2: Less Educated or Uneducated can never become good thinkers.

Fact:

Actually, those with less education, display higher abilities in creative thinking. This is because they do not have an inflated ego that demands correct answers or success in all endeavors. Again, they do not have ready-made-answers (i.e., book-answers) and so are forced to explore, experiment and experience things themselves. This empowers them to go through less explored answers and even find original answers.

Misconception No.3: IQ and thinking ability are the same. The more IQ one has, the better thinking ability one has. On the contrary, those who have lower IQ have only low thinking abilities.

Fact:

It is true that those who have greater thinking ability, as a rule, have high IQ. But this does not mean that all those who have high IQ are good thinkers. Usually high IQ people use their thinking skills for logical thinking, arguments, critical thinking. They very rarely use creative thinking. Thus high IQ is actually a blockage to creative thinking. It has also been found that those who have average IQ can become better thinkers.

Misconception No.4: Thinking ability, decision making ability and problem solving ability are inherent and there is very little we can do to develop these.

Fact:

This is the most terrible misconception regarding thinking. In fact, Dr.Edward de Bono (and also many others) have proven that thinking is a skill that can be enhanced by training and practice. Thus decision making, problem solving and creative thinking can be developed and improved.

During the book-reading session, all members of both groups registered brain activity in the regions of the brain associated with language, reading, memory, and visual abilities in their functional MRI data.

Get this: when members of both groups were asked to do internet searches, both registered the same brain activity pattern as when they were doing book-reading tasks. However, the web-savvy participants also registered in the fMRI brain activities associated with decision-making and complex reasoning.

The scientists from UCLA found out that the web-savvy participants showed a remarkably greater brain activity (21,782 voxels) against those with little internet experience (8,646 voxels). A voxel is the unit of brain activity measured by the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

As shown in the above photo, red shows brain activity while reading a book (left); the image on the right displays activity while engaging in an Internet search. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Los Angeles)

While we have already reported on the benefits of brain-exercising crossword puzzles, memory consolidating deep sleep, brain-boosting iMusic, and computer games, this discovery (which will be published on the next issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry) presents a significant change in the way we view net-surfing.

Exactly the stuff weird, sci-fi, B-movie, flicks are made of. It makes me imagine a mad scientist strapping a sexy babe inside his lab and zapping her wits to kingdom come with lightning blue Tesla coil sparks.

Neuron (Oct. 23, 2008 vol. 60, issue 2) cites an experiment by a team of neurobiologists at the Medical College of Georgia, which developed a way to selectively erase memories. These geeks-in-white focused their study on a protein called alpha-CaMKII, which is a factor in learning and memory. By manipulating this protein while a certain memory is being retrieved, that memory is erased-selectively, leaving other information in your head untouched. It's not like the total amnesia-inducing memory eraser of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in MiB. No, no, no. You wouldn't reformat your HD, if you could just delete individual files!

The word "selectively" makes this sound so cool. You hate your boyfriend? Forget him-literally! Just like Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Ever had an enormously truly embarrassing moment that makes you cringe every time you remember it? You can't make everyone forget, but you can erase it from your mind. And then, you won't feel embarrassed anymore.

Geeks-in-white team leader Joe Tsien does not share our drooling optimism, however. Believing that the human brain is far more complex than a mouse brain, he said, "I don't think it's possible you can do the same thing in humans." Quite unlike our mad scientist, Tsien apparently questions the wisdom of deleting a person's memories. "All memories, including the painful emotional memories, have their purposes. We learn great lessons from those memories or experiences so we can avoid making the same kind of mistakes again, and help us to adapt down the road," Tsien declared in a telephone interview with Reuters earlier this week.

If you would like to argue that you want to forget about your addiction to alcohol, or your fear of arachnids, or your mother-in-law, Tsien has this to say about selective human memory zapping, "If this happens in my lifetime, I wouldn't be surprised either."

 

 

This is what Miss Kalish recommends: do some mental exercising puzzles (crossword, soduko,etc.) for about an hour and then "cool down with a glass of wine." Besides improving your brain health, this could even ward off Alzheimer's disease. Oops! We forgot to mention... Moderation, she cautions.

We have to point out, however, that drinking more than a glass could hurt you more than it would benefit your brain (before you guys go rushing to your parents to show this post for a free pass to the bar!)

In fact, WebMD, in its Cancel Happy Hour: Alcohol Shrinks Brain article, says drinking 7 to 14 times a week (considered "moderate drinking") would harm your brain: even moderate drinking could cause your brain to slightly deteriorate.

Nintendo's Brain Age, on the other hand, has been widely accepted as a brain-boosting video game. Dr. R. Kaplan, in a post at Smartkit.com adds Dance Dance Revolution and In The Groove to the list. He said that numerous research, using Synchronized Metronome Tapping , have shown remarkable improvement from respondents. These improvements range from coordination and attention to reading and math fluency.

Got an exam coming? Get to the video gaming dance floor and start dancing for some brain push-ups!

We go to school. We learn. Then we go out and apply what we have learned. Then we learn some more.

We call this education. We refer to it as knowledge. When we wish to put it to a higher level, we ascribe "intellegence" to it.

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?

The Mainstream Science on Intelligence defines intelligence as, "A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings, 'catching on,' 'making sense' of things, or 'figuring out' what to do."

That's quite a mouthful.

I'd say intelligence is the combination of the health of your brain (its capability to process) and the amount of knowledge you have learned. Intelligence is having a healthy mental faculty that is adept at applying the correct knowledge to the correct problem or situation.

IMPROVE YOUR INTELLIGENCE

A lot of us are resigned to the idea that some are just plain smarter than others. These are the same people who have not gone across recent studies on human intelligence that prove it is possible for a person to improve his brain functions (so he can learn more and faster).

Recent studies have proven that you can actually make new neurons even as you grow older. With the right methods, you "literally rewire the brain with the new parts as the older ones wear out."

Below are my 3 favorite neuron-boosters and gray matter spa that are sure to preserve, protect and enhance brain power.

1. Stimulate your mind by constantly learning new things - We go to school and we learn. Then we go out to face the world with the little knowledge we have. The world is constantly evolving. It was flat before, now it is round.

Research has shown that continuing to learn new things and constant mental stimulation, is the key to the survival of your new brain cells. Your brain constantly produces new brain cells and an active brain allows these new cells to hook-up communication lines with the old existing ones. This is how you avoid dementia.

We need to keep ourselves mentally charged. Otherwise, like unused muscles, our brain can atrophy and you know what it could mean.

There are a lot of things you could do to stimulate your brain, like learning a new language (this ranks high among the scholars' brain-age slowdown list), learn to play a musical instrument, visit museums, solve crosswords or soduko, learn a new hobby or a new recipe, learn to draw, read, read, and read.

2. Socialize - people can be a pain in the butt. Notice the amount of brain power you use when interacting with the challenging ones? Seriously, studies have shown that having no social ties is believed to be an independent risk factor to cognitive decline in the elderly. Grumpy old men are usually those who stay indoors most of the time and never socialize.

Socialization is as good as any of your traditional form of mental exercise. It boosts memory and intellectual performance. The more you socialize, the better your cognitive functioning becomes/remains.

3. Music as brain-boosters - Albert Einstein, one of the world's eminent super-brains, got a lot of help from music when he was in the middle of one of his "E=mc²" moments. He even claimed that he was smart because of music (see Einstein and what music did for his genius).

Thomas Jefferson was also known to have written the Declaration of Independence with the help of music. It is believed that he would play his violin whenever he needed to figure out the right words for certain parts. Music helped him process the right words in his brain and transfer them to paper.

Numerous studies hava established music's powerful way of enhancing one's brain's learning and functioning capabilities. For classical music, it has been established that the baroque classics of Bach and Mozart do wonders to one's brains. Modern techonology have also come up with more trendy versions of high-octane neuron-boosters like iMusic.

The brain is a most fascinating machine. However, like anything else, it grows old, and it can decline in efficiency. The above techniques are just some of the ways that you can constantly improve, protect and enhance your brain's capabilities.