You can increase the size of your muscles by pumping iron and improve your stamina with aerobic training. Can you get smarter by exercising-- or altering-- your brain?
This is an imortant question, considering that cognitive decline is a nearly universal feature of ageing. According to Richard A. Friedman, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, US, starting at age 55, our hippocampus, a brain region critical to memory, shrinks 1 to 2 percent every year, and 1 in 9 people aged 65 and older has Alzheimer's disease. The number afflicted is expected to grow rapidly as the baby boom generation ages. Given these grim statistics, we are so keen to try supposed smart drugs and supplements to brain training, that promise to boost normal mental functioning or stem its all-too-common decline.
The very notion of cognitive enhancement is seductive and possible. After all, the brain is capable of change and learning at all ages. Our brain has remarkable neuroplasticity; that is, it can remodel and change itself in response to various experiences and injuries. So can it be trained to enhance its own cognitive prowess? The multi-billion-dollar brain training industry certainly thinks so and claims that you can increase your memory, attention and reasoning just by playing various mental games.
A few years back, a joint study by BBC and Cambridge University neuroscientists put brain training to the test involving reasoning, problem-solving, short-term memory and attention span. All subjects took a benchmark cognitive test, a kind of modified IQ test, at the beginning and at the end of the study. Although improvements were observed in every cognitive task that was practiced, there was no evidence that brain training made people smarter. There was , however, a glimmer of hope for subjects aged 60 and above. Unlike the younger participants, older subjects showed a significant improvement in verbal reasoning which suggests that brain exercise might delay some of the effects of ageing on the brain.
There are also easy and powerful ways to enhance learning in young people. For example, there is growing evidence that the attitude that young people have about their own intelligence---and what their teachers believe---can have a big impact on how well they learn. Prof Carol Dweck, a Psychology professor at Stanford University, has shown that kids who think that their intelligence is malleable perform better and are more motivated to learn than those who believe that their intelligence is fixed and unchangeable.
In one experiment, Prof Dweck and her colleagues gave a group of low-achieving seventh graders a seminar on how the brain works and put the students at random into two groups. The experimental group was told that learning changes the brain and that students are in charge of this process. The control group received a lesson on memory, but was not instructed to think of intelligence as malleable. At the end of eight weeks, students who had been encouraged to view their intelligence as changeable scored significantly better (85%) than those in the control group (54%) on a test of the material they learnt in the seminar.
These findings appear to have profound implications for educating young people because they suggest that a relatively simple intervention--- teachers encouraging their students to think of their own cognitive capacity as a quality that they can improve--- can have a powerful effect enhancing learning and motivation. The adolescent brain is more malleable than the adult brain, so whether Prof Dweck's findings might hold for adult learning is still an open question! Perhaps it is not the same as increasing innate intelligence, but helping young people hit their intellectual potential is critically valuable--- and apparently not so difficult to do.
So we can clearly enhance learning; there is still more you can do for your brain. It turns out that physical exercise can also improve cognitive function and promote the growth and creation of neurons. For example, mice that are allowed to run on a wheel for just 45 days had more neurons in their hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory formation, than sedentary mice. Also, another study found that women who did weight training twice a year had less brain shrinkage than those who trained once a week or did stretching exercises, though the cognitive significance of this effect is not clear yet.
How might exercise exert these effects? Intriguingly, exercise in humans and animals increases the level of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, in the blood and brain. BDNF promotes the growth and formation of new neurons, and it may be responsible for a remarkable effect of exercise on the brain: an increase in the size of the hippocampus that is linked with improved memory. Conversely, adverse experiences like major depression can lower BDNF levels and are associated with hippocampal shrinkage, a phenomenon that helps explain some of the cognitive impairments that are hallmark of depression. Aside from making people feel better, antidepressants can block the depression-induced drop in BDNF, so these drugs are, in a sense, neuroprotective.
Now the question is whether there is a smart pill, like Adderall or Ritalin, that will do the same work as exercise? We know that these stimulants increase focus and make the world feel more interesting by releasing dopamine in key brain circuits. But when it comes to their effects on memory and learning, the data is mixed. The only consistent cognitive benefit of stimulants is their effect on the consolidation of long-term memory, meaning that they strengthen the ability to recall previously learnt information. There is no evidence that any prescription drug or supplement or smart drink is going to raise your IQ!
But there is one thing that doesn't require a prescription that seems to help preserve cognitive fitness: other people. There is strong evidence that people with richer social networks and engagement have a reduced rate of cognitive decline as they age. Prof Lisa F. Berkman, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, and other colleagues examined data from the Health and Retirement Study, which followed a nationally representative sample of nearly 17,000 subjects aged 50 and older from 1998 to 2004. Subjects were cognitively assessed with a simple word-recall test at baseline and then at two-year-old intervals, and social integration was gauged by contact with family, friends and other social activities.
The results showed that people with the highest level of social integration had less than half the decline in cognitive function of the least socially active subjects. Also, the cognitive protective effects of socializing were greatest among those with fewer than 12 years of education. In conclusion, you can't exceed your innate intelligence. But that seems less important than the fact that there is much that you can do to reach your cognitive potential and to keep it. Forget the smart drugs and supplements; put on your shoes and go exercise or consider brain training. And better still, do it all with your friends!
This is an imortant question, considering that cognitive decline is a nearly universal feature of ageing. According to Richard A. Friedman, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, US, starting at age 55, our hippocampus, a brain region critical to memory, shrinks 1 to 2 percent every year, and 1 in 9 people aged 65 and older has Alzheimer's disease. The number afflicted is expected to grow rapidly as the baby boom generation ages. Given these grim statistics, we are so keen to try supposed smart drugs and supplements to brain training, that promise to boost normal mental functioning or stem its all-too-common decline.
The very notion of cognitive enhancement is seductive and possible. After all, the brain is capable of change and learning at all ages. Our brain has remarkable neuroplasticity; that is, it can remodel and change itself in response to various experiences and injuries. So can it be trained to enhance its own cognitive prowess? The multi-billion-dollar brain training industry certainly thinks so and claims that you can increase your memory, attention and reasoning just by playing various mental games.
A few years back, a joint study by BBC and Cambridge University neuroscientists put brain training to the test involving reasoning, problem-solving, short-term memory and attention span. All subjects took a benchmark cognitive test, a kind of modified IQ test, at the beginning and at the end of the study. Although improvements were observed in every cognitive task that was practiced, there was no evidence that brain training made people smarter. There was , however, a glimmer of hope for subjects aged 60 and above. Unlike the younger participants, older subjects showed a significant improvement in verbal reasoning which suggests that brain exercise might delay some of the effects of ageing on the brain.
There are also easy and powerful ways to enhance learning in young people. For example, there is growing evidence that the attitude that young people have about their own intelligence---and what their teachers believe---can have a big impact on how well they learn. Prof Carol Dweck, a Psychology professor at Stanford University, has shown that kids who think that their intelligence is malleable perform better and are more motivated to learn than those who believe that their intelligence is fixed and unchangeable.
In one experiment, Prof Dweck and her colleagues gave a group of low-achieving seventh graders a seminar on how the brain works and put the students at random into two groups. The experimental group was told that learning changes the brain and that students are in charge of this process. The control group received a lesson on memory, but was not instructed to think of intelligence as malleable. At the end of eight weeks, students who had been encouraged to view their intelligence as changeable scored significantly better (85%) than those in the control group (54%) on a test of the material they learnt in the seminar.
These findings appear to have profound implications for educating young people because they suggest that a relatively simple intervention--- teachers encouraging their students to think of their own cognitive capacity as a quality that they can improve--- can have a powerful effect enhancing learning and motivation. The adolescent brain is more malleable than the adult brain, so whether Prof Dweck's findings might hold for adult learning is still an open question! Perhaps it is not the same as increasing innate intelligence, but helping young people hit their intellectual potential is critically valuable--- and apparently not so difficult to do.
So we can clearly enhance learning; there is still more you can do for your brain. It turns out that physical exercise can also improve cognitive function and promote the growth and creation of neurons. For example, mice that are allowed to run on a wheel for just 45 days had more neurons in their hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory formation, than sedentary mice. Also, another study found that women who did weight training twice a year had less brain shrinkage than those who trained once a week or did stretching exercises, though the cognitive significance of this effect is not clear yet.
How might exercise exert these effects? Intriguingly, exercise in humans and animals increases the level of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, in the blood and brain. BDNF promotes the growth and formation of new neurons, and it may be responsible for a remarkable effect of exercise on the brain: an increase in the size of the hippocampus that is linked with improved memory. Conversely, adverse experiences like major depression can lower BDNF levels and are associated with hippocampal shrinkage, a phenomenon that helps explain some of the cognitive impairments that are hallmark of depression. Aside from making people feel better, antidepressants can block the depression-induced drop in BDNF, so these drugs are, in a sense, neuroprotective.
Now the question is whether there is a smart pill, like Adderall or Ritalin, that will do the same work as exercise? We know that these stimulants increase focus and make the world feel more interesting by releasing dopamine in key brain circuits. But when it comes to their effects on memory and learning, the data is mixed. The only consistent cognitive benefit of stimulants is their effect on the consolidation of long-term memory, meaning that they strengthen the ability to recall previously learnt information. There is no evidence that any prescription drug or supplement or smart drink is going to raise your IQ!
But there is one thing that doesn't require a prescription that seems to help preserve cognitive fitness: other people. There is strong evidence that people with richer social networks and engagement have a reduced rate of cognitive decline as they age. Prof Lisa F. Berkman, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, and other colleagues examined data from the Health and Retirement Study, which followed a nationally representative sample of nearly 17,000 subjects aged 50 and older from 1998 to 2004. Subjects were cognitively assessed with a simple word-recall test at baseline and then at two-year-old intervals, and social integration was gauged by contact with family, friends and other social activities.
The results showed that people with the highest level of social integration had less than half the decline in cognitive function of the least socially active subjects. Also, the cognitive protective effects of socializing were greatest among those with fewer than 12 years of education. In conclusion, you can't exceed your innate intelligence. But that seems less important than the fact that there is much that you can do to reach your cognitive potential and to keep it. Forget the smart drugs and supplements; put on your shoes and go exercise or consider brain training. And better still, do it all with your friends!
No comments:
Post a Comment