Increase Your Intelligence - part 2

Really the question is can we do anything to increase our mental abilities or will what we're born with just slowly decline with age?

intelligence is really complicated and not fully understood yet. Apparently,our ability to leaarn from experience, to think clearly, to remember what's really important, to cope with everyday life (in other words, our intelligence) depends on the connections and the pathways between the cells in our brains.

the adult brain has around 100 billion brain cells(neurons). each neuron connects with thousands of others. information passes through these connections ('synapses').

A three-year-old child has a quadrillion synapses! but an adult has only (!) 100-500 trillion. so while it's true the brain does decline a bit as we get older, our brains create new neurons and new synapses all the time and throughout our lives. They creaate new pathways through the brain and the brain itself changes size and shape with the things we learn. and this process can continue until our dying day-so long as we make for it!

The brain is plastic - that is to say it's changeable. it changes size and its organisation changes too. All the time. Every single experience,every new bit of information changes it a little, reorganising the neurons and synapses. Every new bit of informaion creates a new neural pathway (series of connections) through the brain. At first the track is only faint, but as we continue to think about/use that information, as we learn more about it,so the pathway becomes sharper, more permanent. Experiments have shown that London cabbies' brains actually change shape with an increased size in the area associated with spatial knowledge.

pianists also showed changes in the organisation and structure of their brains as a result of frequent piano practice.

what can we do to ensure we give our plastic brains the best chance of developing?

Like any muscle in the body, the brain develops through exercise. the more we use it the better (and bigger) it gets. But of course, if we don't use it, like any muscle it will wither and eventually atrophy!)

if you want to develop one specific ability or skill dedicate yourself to that as a cabby does to the Knowledge, or a pianist to her instrument. but if you want to develop the whole brain involve it in as wide a variety of activities as possible: read, talk, listen to music, write poems, do mental arithmetic,study astro-physics (or positive psychology or hairdressing). and think! apparently just imagining engaging in an activity such as playing tennis has a similar effect on the brain as actually doing the activity. I suppose that's why it's so useful to mentally practise a sport - or a language or anything we want to imptove in-while lying comfortably in bed!

But we can't do it all in bed! as well as exercising the brain we should exercise the body. New cells develop best when the body is active- just as true of brain cells as of all the other cells in the body.

I hope you found that interesting. pLease let me know!

Next time I'm going o blog about 'mindfulness' which seems to be very trendy at the moment

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