How to Get Smart. Really

Your brain can be enhanced, whether eight or 80 years old, and no, you don’t need surgery or steroids to get smarter

Remember the last time you tried to crank up your cranium and all you got was a creak? That red-faced moment as you tried to bluster your way through those crazy algebraic squiggles? That chess move that you can’t believe you didn’t foresee? You’re not alone. We’ve all suffered brain flicker, when our neurons nosedive and synapses snap, as we struggle to cope with ideas, numbers or some puzzle.

All of which has made us wish for a better ‘Intel inside’ at some point or the other, something to do a better job of processing all the information that comes our way. The good news is that international research is hot on this trail. You can be sure human brains are being studied somewhere on this planet under test conditions even as you read this. What we know so far is exciting enough: yes, your brain can be enhanced, whether eight or 80 years old, and no, you don’t need surgery or steroids to get smarter. It just takes the right food ingredients, some sweat, daily meditation and a go at Playstation to boost your neural network.

But first, just what exactly is smartness? The idea that an IQ test offers a reasonably good brain report is outdated and invalid. Your 100-billion-strong neural network is much too complex to be subjected to reductive tests of verbal, spatial or numeric abilities for an assessment of intelligence. What can be said is that it varies, and some people are observed to make better use of their senses to acquire, process, retrieve, judge and act upon available information.

A study on London cab drivers, for instance, found that they have developed an astounding cognitive ability ‘to see places in their hippocampi’. Likewise, chess grandmasters have entire games mapped in their minds. Music maestros have aural memories. Clearly, no standardised scale can put numbers to these assorted capabilities. The first academic to declare that intelligence is too diverse a concept to be measured by any one approach was Howard Gardner, Harvard University’s legendary professor of cognition and education.

It was some 25 years ago that he in troduced his Theory of Multiple Intelligences: don’t go by just words and numbers, think of spatial, musical, naturalistic and other abilities as other kinds of intelligence. Gardner has recently identified “the ninth intelligence, existential intelligence, the intelligence of Big Questions”. What standardised test could possibly assess how well one takes up such soul-searching questions as ‘who am I?’

Cognitive neuroscience, or mind science, is still under development as a discipline. “Our understanding has been bolstered by improvements in neuro-imaging tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and an increased understanding of emotional influences upon intelligence,” says Professor Charles Hillman, who runs the kinesiology and neuroscience laboratory at the University of Illinois. Yet, while humankind has put one of its own on the moon and can Google almost everything, we’re still scrounging to understand our cerebral selves.

Many mysteries endure. How do we process speech? Where in the brain does face recognition happen? What is consciousness? “While these are difficult questions, we are making good progress,” says Rajesh Kasturirangan, a cognitive scientist at the National Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, “My estimate is that we’ll get good answers in the next few decades.”

Moreover, memory is only a component of cognition, a staccato incantation of data, while active intelligence involves heightened neuron interactivity and synaptic sizzle in patterns old and new. Anyone who has had information, concepts, experiences and sensations come together to spark a fresh thought knows that there’s more to it than easily understood.

Back in 1942, the poet AK Ramanujam pondered whether there’s an ‘Indian way of thinking’, and we’re still looking for an answer. This may be because “cognitive science is still finding its feet as an academic discipline in India”, according to Professor Narayanan Srinivasan of the Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad. Observed differences may offer some clues. “Indians seem more comfortable with ambiguity than Westerners,” notes Kasturirangan. To his mind, an ease with uncertainty and human fallibility, even haphazard queues and off-schedule trains, results in “a kind of cognition that allows for improvisation when things do not go exactly as one wants”.

Another Indian characteristic is lingual, the ease with which Indians switch from one language to another. Is this an advantage? “The science [on this] is too controversial to make any firm conclusions,” says Kasturirangan. There is some research evidence to justify the claim that linguistic skills and intelligence are closely linked, and that the great evolutionary expansion of the human brain some 150 millennia ago coincided with the development of complex language—which gave the individual access to others’ knowledge—as we know it.

The modern-day dynamics of the relationship, however, are still under scientific study.

There’s still a lot we need to learn about what lies above our medulla oblongata. But for now, the uplifting news is that humans can grow new brain cells even after adulthood. For ages, brain growth was assumed to end after adolescence. Science, since, has spotted even ageing neurons acting like acrobats, with enough “plasticity” to reshape the brain and prime it for better performance. Read on, if you’d like to overhaul that mass of nerve tissue inside your cranium.

“I’m lucky that I love fish,” says Dr Fernando Gomez Pinilla over the phone, and that’s no frivolous foodie confession from this professor of neurosurgery and physiological science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is talking about his latest scientific research which happens to have spilled onto his dinner plate. It shows that a fish-n-fruit-rich diet can improve brain function, protect the mind and stave off mental ageing. “The brain, more than any other organ in the body, consumes a tremendous amount of energy. It’s also subjected to a lot of oxidative stress which results in cell damage,” he says. “Fish, berries and antioxidants reduce and reverse this. They also protect the learning and memory nerve membranes.” Docosahexaeonoic acid (DHA), an Omega-3 fatty acid that makes up about 30 per cent of our nerve cell membranes, is also found in oily fish like salmon and sardines, while its vegetarian version linolenic acid is present in walnuts and flax seeds. Tanking up on these fats improve memory and learning.

Remember PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves, the valet who spouted Spinoza? Nearly a century ago, he was onto something when he said his brainpower came from fish. New research suggests that access to fish during human evolution also had a role in increasing the brain-to-bodymass ratio. Related new anthropology shows that Neanderthals gorged on seafood.

Plenty of new research reveals that India’s own special memory saviour may well have been haldi. “Curcumin, the key ingredient that makes turmeric yellow, increases memory retention. It also protects the brain from harmful free radicals,” says Dr Gomez-Pinilla. This segues with the fact that the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, which affects memory and behaviour, is low in India.

Potato chips are bad for the body, we have long known. Now it’s clear they also blunt the brain. Professor Gomez-Pinilla says saturated fats, in which most of these munchies are typically fried to attain their crispness, cause high levels of oxidative stress on the brain. They also reduce the levels of good molecules involved in the learning process. The UCLA professor’s experiments have shown that when rats are low on these molecules, they cannot perform the simple task of locating objects that are hidden underwater. Other rats, equipped with higher levels of learning molecules, perform perfectly.

Of course, this does not mean we can ignore the body fattening that junk food results in. Studies are now showing that childhood obesity may have a direct impact on brain performance as well. According to Professor Hillman of the University of Illinois, such kids “aren’t able to build the much needed cognitive-reserve that they will depend upon during the ageing process”.

You do not have to wait for old age for the ill-effects of obesity, though. The troubles start straightaway. “Data is now emerging that reveals the detrimental effects of an unhealthy body mass index on cognition,” adds the professor.

With more studies, more evidence is likely to turn up. After all, in evolutionary terms, obesity among human beings is an extremely recent phenomenon, no older than a few centuries. Supersize lifestyles need to be dumped while there’s still time to recover.

Of all things, our own salty sweat turns out to be an amazing brain energiser. So don’t swallow the Encyclopaedia Britannica to get smarter. Get out—or rather, run out—of the library. Sprint, swim, stretch, whatever. New research recommends activity as a brain tonic. “Aerobic exercise turns on the front part of your brain. It activates the frontal cortex, which deals with information and higher thought processing and makes your mind run smoothly,” says Dr John Ratey of Harvard Medical School and author of Spark: the Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.

Aerobic activity recharges the brain’s hippocampus, which deals with learning and memory. It actually generates new cells. Scientists call this phenomenon ‘neurogenesis’, something that was thought to cease by age 30 until new evidence showed up. “It’s the most exciting cognitive science frontier, since it could prevent forgetfulness as we age,” says Scott Small, professor of neurology, Columbia Medical University, and co-author of the seminal paper on the subject.

If you’re under 30, or better still a school kid, the effects are even more dramatic. Memory, motor function and auditory attention can all be beefed up with exercise. Not only does it deliver more blood and oxygen to the brain, it pumps up the brain-derived-neurotrophic factor, which is associated with higher-order thought.

So go ahead and lace up your sneakers. They’ll help you become a higher thinker. Whether pumping iron has quite the same effect, though, isn’t known yet. The tests were done on wheel-treading rats, alas, and “you can’t get mice to lift weights”, quips Ratey.

“We can be the makers of our minds,” declares Professor Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has been studying the minds of Buddhist monks over several years. He calls them “the Olympic athletes of meditation”.

When Davidson conducted brain scans, his lab monitors picked up strong ‘gamma waves’ in the monks’ minds. These are wave patterns that have been observed to bear a strong association with alertness and attention. Davidson says complete novices can generate gamma activity, and you needn’t even live a hermit’s life. “Even a week of meditation can lead to detectable changes.”

Srinivasan at the Central University of Allahabad has been studying experts in Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY), transcendental and other such forms of meditation to understand their impact on learning and brain function. “Our study shows that pre-attentive processes are enhanced in SKY meditators,” reports Srinivasan. Right now, he’s researching how meditation can improve attention among children.

The secret of how to get smarter has been right under our noses all along. All we’ve got to do is breathe deeply, and focus attention on this breathing by gently calming the mind down, without letting stray thoughts distract us. This, in essence, is what meditation really is. It increases left brain activity. It boosts happiness and enthusiasm.

It puts you in a positive learning state. So breathe deep and brain up.

These vidoe games aren’t for kids. They’re not for adults. They’re designed specifically for senior citizens to rejuvenate ageing minds. “Our Brain Fitness programme is being recommended by health care providers and offered by auto insurance companies to policyholders without charge in America,” says the spokesperson for the San Francisco-based game developer Posit Science. Ever since it was launched in America, back in 2005, over 100,000 copies of Brain Fitness have been snapped up by seniors.

An intense video exercise, Brain Fitness requires players to respond to entertaining narratives, objects and incidents. When played for 40-60 minutes a day, studies show gains in episodic memory, attention and thought agility, which is sciencespeak for what we laypeople call sharper minds. Besides, ‘I did it!’ moments always help in entrenching new knowledge effectively, even in rundown brains. Independent studies vouch for Posit Science’s claim that its games improve ‘information processing speed and recall’, yielding a 10-year cognitive improvement, thus turning a 75-year-old mind into a 65-year-old one. Known for improving visual-spatial acumen, video games also offer engrossing and challenging mental workouts. There’s Nintendo DS’s Brain Age and websites like MyBrainTrainer.com, which are out to strengthen our wiring. They won’t turn you into an egghead, but they work well enough. The next time you’re faced with mental slowdown, just press ‘play’.

There. You can get smarter. Really.

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