For a better brain

Brain training to sharpen memory. Aerobic exercises to preserve gray matter. Meditation to sharpen the links between reason and emotion. It all sounds wonderful, but there is something frustrating the growing number of studies that identify ways to burnish the brain: they do not go very far. Of course exercises to improve memory are better for the brain than, say, watch reality shows on TV, but the most you get is a more reliable access to knowledge already spread by the cerebral cortex. If the information is not there, there is training the brain that tells you how the Central Bank system, for the southern United States lost the Civil War, what is the importance of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Picasso, or by that Word just hang. Not to mention the type of information that could significantly improve the everyday life: it would not be wonderful to understand and remember more of what we read and hear, learn and retain new skills to improve the chances of employment and link knowledge to, say, see what does your boss react?

That's what we all want - know more, understand more deeply, giving greater creative leaps, save what we read, see invisible links in the eyes of others - and not just enjoy what we have between the ears. That is, in a nutshell: we want to be smarter. By improving our mental game, we would be able to see immediately when a marketer misleads us, understand important medical studies for what bothers us realize the importance of the euro crisis for our retirement fund and make better decisions at work, in love and in life.

So when we dive on the results of the latest research in neurobiology and cognitive science, a recent discovery stood out more than any other: IQ, which has long been thought to be unchangeable after early childhood, may actually increase. And not just one or two points. According to a groundbreaking study published last year in Nature, IQ can climb amazing 21 points in four years - or fall 18.

How to increase your Q.I.
The Q.I. higher not only serves to get into Mensa, the international association of 2% of the world population with IQ higher, and to brag about on dating sites on the internet. The Intelligence Quotient - measured with a set of tests that assess, among others, working memory, spatial ability and pattern recognition - represents a wide variety of cognitive skills: oral, analytical and other. Twenty points are "a huge difference," says Cathy Price, cognitive scientist at University College London, who led the research. "The individual who passes the Q.I. 110 for the Q.I. 130 is no longer median and becomes gifted. And if falling from 104 to 84, will go from average to below average! The study was done with people between 12 and 20 years, but given the recent findings on the ability of the brain has to change - the so-called neuroplasticity - up to 60 and 70 years, the scientist believes that the result fits all. "My guess is that the performance on IQ tests can also change significantly in adulthood, "she says. "The same degree of plasticity (found in young adults) may be present for life."

In this recent study, Cathy Price and colleagues have documented the changes as IQ correspond to structural changes in the brain. In 39% of participants whose Q.I. verbal changed significantly, imaging tests of the brain before and after showed a corresponding change in the density and volume of gray matter (number of neurons) in the left motor cortex region activated when naming, reading and speaking. In which 21% Q.I. nonverbal (troubleshooting not related to language, such as spatial reasoning) increased or decreased, so did the gray matter density in the anterior cerebellum, associated with hand movements. While most of us think that motor and cognitive skills have nothing to do with each other, several studies have found that refine sensorimotor ability can promote cognitive skills. No one knows exactly why, but maybe the two brain systems are more interconnected than you think. So learn to knit or listen to classical music and increase your IQ

The importance of short-term memory
Although it has long been considered that the short-term memory - Notepad brain, basically - is just one component of IQ Overall, recent research shows that, in fact, it can be the lever capable of raising intelligence as a whole. In one of the biggest surprises of the research on intelligence, the group of scientists led by Susanne Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl of the University of Michigan, found that short-term memory can be the foundation of intelligence in a higher degree than previously suspected. They trained adult volunteers a difficult task for the short-term memory: you had to listen to a series of letters and see at the same time a series of computer screens with a blue square in different places. And it was necessary to identify when the spoken letter or square position combined with several previous screens. The more exercised the short-term memory, more increased the purest form of brain power, fluid intelligence - the ability to reason and solve problems independently of existing knowledge so. (A test of reasoning part wore calls Progressive Matrices:. See three geometric configurations and choose which of the many options follow the default) In June, the Michigan team achieved the same result in schoolchildren and confirmed that the training memory improves performance on intelligence tests and thus may be the safest way to an IQ higher.

"There is controversy as to whether the brain training enhance cognition," says neuroscientist Eric Kandel of Columbia University, one of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2000 for discoveries about the molecular and cellular basis of memory. "But when you really exercise memory, memorizing poetry, for example - Shakespeare's sonnets serve - probably aspects of cognitive function better."

Neuroimaging studies give clues as to how the training of memory enhances the pure intelligence. During training of memory tests show that several regions of the brain (prefrontal cortex, lateral, inferior parietal cortex, anterior cingulate, and basal ganglia) are more active, indicating that these regions are involved in memory. Interestingly, these same regions also come into play when the brain thinks and reasons. "With cautious optimism, it seems that there are real effects on those memory training studies," says psychologist Jason Chein of Temple University. In his studies, he found that adults who trained a complex task of working memory for four weeks also felt significant improvements in reading comprehension.

Kandel states that the explanation of such gain is the "intensive training" - very different from easy solutions like eating blueberries or take pomegranate juice, they say. It turns out that the intelligence comes from having more synapses (connections between neurons). The creation of new neurons (neurogenesis) and synapses makes learning possible.

Pay attention, be smart
The other element that we can train the brain to raise the IQ is attention. Neuroscientists have shown several times that attention is the sine qua non condition of learning. Only those who pay attention to who is presented at a party remember the name of that person.

The effect on the improvement of care may explain why stimulant medications help some people to remember (and is hence the popularity of these drugs among students preparing for exams). Both stimulants increase brain levels of dopamine, neurochemical substance that produces the motivation and the feeling of reward and that makes it more likely that the job will attract our attention. Similarly, it has been shown that action games like Space Fortress, and games with a lot of strategy, as Rise of Nations, improve memory and the ability to pay attention.

Another way of achieving the same thing is passion, according to Cathy Price. Who does not care about what you read, see or listen does not save anything.

Increase brain power: the most important habits
Although improving brain requires work, the good thing is that there are affordable ways to achieve.

Aerobic Exercise - Walking 45 minutes a day three times a week stimulates the production of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor, its acronym in English), which feeds the creation of new neurons and synapses, which is behind the learning. Scientists led by Arthur Kramer of the University of Illinois, and Kirk Erickson of the University of Pittsburgh showed that exercise increases the gray matter in the hippocampus region that processes new knowledge, especially the link between different information that form complex memories. This can not raise IQ, but it should make us more services by filling the cortex information.

Naps - In a 2010 study, psychology professor Matthew Walker and colleagues at the University of California found that a nap in the middle of the day not only restore as increases brain power. Students who took a 90 minute nap at two in the afternoon after a task that forced the hippocampus - learn the names of some 120 new faces, for example - associated more easily the name to the face after the nap and had a better performance those who do not napped.

"Who was agreed, there was deterioration of memory capacity, but the nap restored the ability to even higher level than before the nap," says Walker. (So congratulations to those Nike and Silicon Valley companies such as Google, offering rooms for employees naps.) The EEG to record brain activity show how it happened. The number of discharges of electrical activity called "sleep spindles" experienced during naps predicts as the ability to learn will improve when the person wakes up. Walker suspects that sleep spindles indicate the hippocampus of information transport activity for permanent storage in the cortex. It is how to transfer data from a USB drive to a hard disk, which "consolidates the long-term storage the downloaded information and leaves us with renewed capacity in the key (hippocampus) to absorb new information," says Walker. The better transfer hippocampal information (initial storage location) to the cortex (long-term storage location), we can access more information when we need.

Downtime - With functional magnetic resonance imaging, scientists at Tohoku University in Japan measured the cerebral blood flow of 63 volunteers who asked them to keep the mind empty. Those who had increased blood flow in the white matter that connects the neurons among themselves scored higher on a task that required them to rapid generation of new ideas, as the researchers explained in the journal PLoS One. Creativity comes when we note that other links do not see, and so it makes sense that the increase in white matter activity with the rest of the brain promotes creativity. So put the phone aside and let the brain idle.

Caffeine - A good dose of coffee can make the sharpest mind, according to a 2011 study published in Nature Neuroscience that found that caffeine strengthens brain connections. Serena Dudek and colleagues at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS, its acronym in English) found that rats given doses of caffeine comparable to two cups of coffee showed stronger electrical activity between neurons in the hippocampus called CA2 of those who have not received caffeine. The most intense connectivity means learning and better memory.

A second language - A strategy with more evidence is also the most difficult. When the brain fluent in two languages choose, say, between English and French, the cortical circuits that keep the two languages are enabled. The prefrontal cortex then have to step in to choose the right word: man or homme? As noted cognitive scientist Ellen Bialystok of York University of Canada, the year that the prefrontal cortex is in bilingualism is transmitted to other functions and improves skills that increase IQ, as the solution of problems and the shift of attention. It seems that it comes to postpone dementia within five years.

Certain foods and spices - Although a healthy diet is associated with lower risk of Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and stroke, which affect brain health, there is no proof that certain vitamins or foods rich in antioxidants increase intelligence. But scientists hopes are in some exotic ingredients. For example, studies indicate that turmeric and pomegranate juice can improve memory and other aspects of cognitive function.