"One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop
an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest
efforts." —Albert Einstein
While Einstein was not a neuroscientist, he sure knew what he was
talking about in regards to the human capacity to achieve. He knew
intuitively what we can now show with data—what it takes to function at
your cognitive best. In essence: What doesn’t kill you makes you
smarter.
Not so many years ago, I was told by a professor of mine that you
didn’t have much control over your intelligence. It was
genetic—determined at birth. He explained that efforts made to raise the
intelligence of children (through programs like Head Start,
for example) had limited success while they were in practice, and
furthermore, once the "training" stopped, they went right back to their
previously low cognitive levels. Indeed, the data did show that
[pdf], and he (along with many other intelligence researchers)
concluded that intelligence could not be improved—at least not to create
a lasting change.
Well, I disagreed.
You see, before that point in my studies, I had begun working as a
Behavior Therapist, training young children on the autism spectrum.
These kids had a range of cognitive disabilities—my job was to train
them in any and all areas that were deficient, to get them as close to
functioning at the same level of their peers as possible. Therapy
utilized a variety of methods, or Multimodal Teaching (using as many modes of input as possible), in order to make this happen.
One of my first clients was a little boy w/ PDD-NOS
(Pervasive Developmental Delays-Not Otherwise Specified), a mild form
of autism. When we began therapy, his IQ was tested and scored in the
low 80s—which is considered borderline mental retardation. After I
worked with him for about three years— one on one, teaching in areas
such as communication, reading, math, social functioning, play skills,
leisure activities—using multimodal techniques
[pdf] —he was retested. His IQ score was well over 100 (with 100
considered "average", as compared to the general population). That’s a
20 point increase, more than one standard deviation improvement, by a
child with an autism spectrum disorder!
He wasn’t the only child I saw make vast improvements in the years
I’ve been a therapist, either. I’ve been fortunate enough to see many
children grow by leaps and bounds—not by magic, and not even by taking
medication, and there’s data to show proof of their gains. I thought—if
these kids with severe learning impediments could make such amazing
progress, with that progress carrying over into every aspect of their
cognitive functioning—why can’t an average person make those kinds of
gains as well? Or even more gains, considering they don’t have the additional challenge of an autism spectrum disorder?
Although the data from those early studies showed dismal results, I
wasn’t discouraged. I still believed it was possible to significantly
increase your cognitive functioning, given the proper training—since I
had seen it with my own eyes through my work as a therapist.
Then in 2008, a very exciting study was published, Improving Fluid Intelligence with Training on Working Memory,
by Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, and Perrig. This study was pretty much a
game-changer for those doing research on this topic. They showed for
the first time, that it might actually be possible to increase your
intelligence to a significant degree through training. What did they do
different?
The subjects in Jaeggi’s study were trained on an intensive, multimodal (visual and auditory input) working memory task (the dual-n-back)
[1] for variable lengths of time, for either one or two weeks,
depending on the group. Following this training, they were tested to see
how much they improved. As one would expect, after training, their
scores on that task got better. But they went a step further. They
wanted to see if those gains on the training task could transfer to an
increase in skill on a completely different test of cognitive ability, which would indicate an increase in overall cognitive ability. What did they find?
Following training of working memory using the dual n-back test, the
subjects were indeed able to transfer those gains to a significant
improvement in their score on a completely unrelated cognitive task. This was a super-big deal.
Here’s the graph of their results, and you can read about the entire study here.
What is "Intelligence"?
First of all, let me explain what I mean when I say the word
"intelligence". To be clear, I’m not just talking about increasing the
volume of facts or bits of knowledge you can accumulate, or what is
referred to as crystallized intelligence—this isn’t fluency or memorization training—it’s almost the opposite, actually. I’m talking about increasing your fluid intelligence, or your capacity to learn new information, retain it, then use that new knowledge as a foundation to solve the next problem, or learn the next new skill, and so on.
Now, while working memory is not synonymous with intelligence, working memory correlates
with intelligence to a large degree. In order to generate successfully
intelligent output, a good working memory is pretty important. So to
make the most of your intelligence, improving your working memory will
help this significantly—like using the very best and latest parts to
help a machine to perform at its peak.
The take-home points from this research? This study is relevant because they discovered:
1. Fluid intelligence is trainable.
2. The training and subsequent gains are dose-dependent—meaning, the more you train, the more you gain.
3. Anyone can increase their cognitive ability, no matter what your starting point is.
4. The effect can be gained by training on tasks that don’t resemble the test questions.
How Can I Put This Research To Practical Use For My Own Benefit?
There is a reason why the dual n-back task was so successful at
increasing cognitive ability. It involves dividing your attention
between competing stimuli, multimodal in fashion (one visual, one
auditory). It requires you to focus on specific details while ignoring
irrelevant information, which helps to improve your working memory over
time, gradually increasing your ability to multi-task the information
effectively. In addition, the stimulus was constantly switched, so there
was never a "training to the test questions" phenomenon—it was always
different. If you’ve never taken the dual n-back test, let me tell you
this: It’s wicked hard. I’m not surprised there was so much cognitive
gain from practicing this activity.
But let’s think practically.
Eventually, you will run out of cards in the deck or sounds in the
array (the experiment lasted 2 weeks), so it isn’t practical to think
that if you want to continually increase your brain power over the
course of your lifetime, that the dual n-back alone will do the trick.
Also, you’ll get bored with it and stop doing it. I know I would. Not to
mention the time it takes to train in this activity—we all have busy
lives! So we need to think of how to simulate the same types of
heavy-duty brain thrashing—using multimodal methods—that can be applied
to your normal life, while still maintaining the maximum benefits, in
order to get the cognitive growth.
So—taking all of this into account, I have come up with five
primary elements involved in increasing your fluid intelligence, or
cognitive ability. Like I said, it would be impractical to constantly
practice the dual n-back task or variations thereof every day for the
rest of your life to reap cognitive benefits. But it isn’t impractical
to adopt lifestyle changes that will have the same—and even greater
cognitive benefits. These can be implemented every day, to get you the
benefits of intense entire-brain training, and should transfer to gains
in overall cognitive functioning as well.
These five primary principles are:
1. Seek Novelty
2. Challenge Yourself
3. Think Creatively
4. Do Things The Hard Way
5. Network
Any one of these things by itself is great, but if you really want to function at your absolute cognitive best, you should do all five, and as often as possible. In fact, I live my life by these five principles. If you adopt these as fundamental guidelines, I guarantee you will be performing at your peak ability, surpassing even what you believe you are capable of—all without artificial enhancement. Best part: Science supports these principles by way of data!
1. Seek Novelty
It is no coincidence that geniuses like Einstein were skilled in
multiple areas, or polymaths, as we like to refer to them. Geniuses are
constantly seeking out novel activities, learning a new domain. It’s
their personality.
There is only one trait out of the "Big Five" from the Five Factor Model
of personality (Acronym: OCEAN, or Openness, Conscientiousness,
Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) that correlates with IQ,
and it is the trait of Openness to new experience.
People who rate high on Openness are constantly seeking new information,
new activities to engage in, new things to learn—new experiences in
general
When you seek novelty, several things are going on. First of all, you
are creating new synaptic connections with every new activity you
engage in. These connections build on each other, increasing your neural
activity, creating more connections to build on other
connections—learning is taking place.
An area of interest in recent research [pdf] is neural plasticity as a factor in individual differences in intelligence. Plasticity
is referring to the number of connections made between neurons, how
that affects subsequent connections, and how long-lasting those
connections are. Basically, it means how much new information you are
able to take in, and if you are able to retain it, making lasting
changes to your brain. Constantly exposing yourself to new things helps
puts your brain in a primed state for learning.
Novelty also triggers dopamine (I have mentioned this before in other posts),
which not only kicks motivation into high gear, but it stimulates
neurogenesis—the creation of new neurons—and prepares your brain for
learning. All you need to do is feed the hunger.
Excellent learning condition = Novel Activity—>triggers
dopamine—>creates a higher motivational state—>which fuels
engagement and primes neurons—>neurogenesis can take place + increase
in synaptic plasticity (increase in new neural connections, or learning).
As a follow-up of the Jaeggi study, researchers in Sweden [pdf] found that after 14 hours of training working memory over 5 weeks’ time, there was an increase of dopamine D1
binding potential in the prefrontal and parietal areas of the brain.
This particular dopamine receptor, the D1 type, is associated with
neural growth and development, among other things. This increase in plasticity, allowing greater binding of this receptor, is a very good thing for maximizing cognitive functioning.
Take home point: Be an "Einstein". Always look to new activities to
engage your mind—expand your cognitive horizons. Learn an instrument.
Take an art class. Go to a museum. Read about a new area of science. Be a
knowledge junkie.
2. Challenge Yourself
There are absolutely oodles of terrible things written and
promoted on how to "train your brain" to "get smarter". When I speak of
"brain training games", I’m referring to the memorization and
fluency-type games, intended to increase your speed of processing, etc,
such as Sudoku,
that they tell you to do in your "idle time" (complete oxymoron,
regarding increasing cognition). I’m going to shatter some of that stuff
you’ve previously heard about brain training games. Here goes: They
don’t work. Individual brain training games don’t make you smarter—they make you more proficient at the brain training games.
Now, they do serve a purpose, but it is short-lived. The key to
getting something out of those types of cognitive activities sort of
relates to the first principle of seeking novelty. Once you master one
of those cognitive activities in the brain-training game, you need to move on to the next challenging activity.
Figure out how to play Sudoku? Great! Now move along to the next type
of challenging game. There is research that supports this logic.
A few years ago, scientist Richard Haier wanted to see if you could increase your cognitive ability by intensely training on novel mental activities for a period of several weeks. They used the video game Tetris
as the novel activity, and used people who had never played the game
before as subjects (I know—can you believe they exist?!). What they
found, was that after training for several weeks on the game Tetris, the
subjects experienced an increase in cortical thickness, as well as an
increase in cortical activity, as evidenced by the increase in how much
glucose was used in that area of the brain. Basically, the brain used
more energy during those training times, and bulked up in
thickness—which means more neural connections, or new learned
expertise—after this intense training. And they became experts at Tetris. Cool, right?
Here’s the thing: After that initial explosion of cognitive growth, they noticed a decline
in both cortical thickness, as well as the amount of glucose used
during that task. However, they remained just as good at Tetris; their
skill did not decrease. The brain scans showed less brain activity during the game-playing, instead of more, as in the previous days. Why the drop? Their brains got more efficient.
Once their brain figured out how to play Tetris, and got really good at
it, it got lazy. It didn’t need to work as hard in order to play the
game well, so the cognitive energy and the glucose went somewhere else
instead.
Efficiency is not your friend when it comes to
cognitive growth. In order to keep your brain making new connections and
keeping them active, you need to keep moving on to another challenging
activity as soon as you reach the point of mastery in the one
you are engaging in. You want to be in a constant state of slight
discomfort, struggling to barely achieve whatever it is you are trying
to do, as Einstein alluded to in his quote. This keeps your brain on its
toes, so to speak. We’ll come back to this point later on.
3. Think Creatively
When I say thinking creatively will help you achieve neural growth, I
am not talking about painting a picture, or doing something artsy, like
we discussed in the first principle, Seeking Novelty. When I
speak of creative thinking, I am talking about creative cognition
itself, and what that means as far as the process going on in your
brain.
Contrary to popular belief, creative thinking does not equal
"thinking with the right side of your brain". It involves recruitment
from both halves of your brain, not just the right. Creative
cognition involves divergent thinking (a wide range of topics/subjects),
making remote associations between ideas, switching back and forth
between conventional and unconventional thinking (cognitive
flexibility), and generating original, novel ideas that are also
appropriate to the activity you are doing. In order to do this well, you
need both right and left hemispheres working in conjunction with each
other.
Several years ago, Dr Robert Sternberg, former Dean at Tufts University, opened the PACE
(Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise) Center, in
Boston. Sternberg has been on a quest to not only understand the
fundamental concept of intelligence, but also to find ways in which any
one person can maximize his or her intelligence through training, and
especially, through teaching in schools.
Here Sternberg describes the goals of the PACE Center, which was started at Yale:
"The basic idea of the center is that abilities are not fixed but rather flexible, that they’re modifiable, and that anyone can transform their abilities into competencies, and their competencies into expertise," Sternberg explains. "We’re especially interested in how we can help people essentially modify their abilities so that they can be better able to face the tasks and situations they’re going to confront in life."
As part of a research study, The Rainbow Project
[pdf], he created not only innovative methods of creative teaching in
the classroom, but generated assessment procedures that tested the
students in ways that got them to think about the problems in creative
and practical ways, as well as analytical, instead of just memorizing
facts.
Sternberg explains,
"In the Rainbow Project we created assessments of creative and practical as well as analytical abilities. A creative test might be: ‘Here’s a cartoon. Caption it.’ A practical problem might be a movie of a student going into a party, looking around, not knowing anyone, and obviously feeling uncomfortable. What should the student do?"
He wanted to find out if by teaching students to think creatively (and practically)
about a problem, as well as for memory, he could get them to (i) Learn
more about the topic, (ii) Have more fun learning, and (iii) Transfer
that knowledge gained to other areas of academic performance. He wanted
to see if by varying the teaching and assessment methods, he could
prevent "teaching to the test" and get the students to actually learn
more in general. He collected data on this, and boy, did he get great
results.
In a nutshell? On average, the students in the test group (the ones
taught using creative methods) received higher final grades in the
college course than the control group (taught with traditional methods
and assessments). But—just to make things fair— he also gave the test group the very same analytical-type exam that the regular students got (a multiple choice test), and they scored higher on that test as well. That means they were able to transfer the knowledge they gained using creative, multimodal teaching methods, and score higher on a completely different cognitive test of achievement on that same material. Sound familiar?
I mentioned earlier that efficiency is not your friend if you are
trying to increase your intelligence. Unfortunately, many things in life
are centered on trying to make everything more efficient. This is so we
can do more things, in a shorter amount of time, expending the least
amount of physical and mental energy possible. However, this isn’t doing
your brain any favors.
Take one object of modern convenience, GPS. GPS is an amazing
invention. I am one of those people GPS was invented for. My sense of
direction is terrible. I get lost all the time. So when
GPS came along, I was thanking my lucky stars. But you know what? After
using GPS for a short time, I found that my sense of direction was worse.
If I failed to have it with me, I was even more lost than before. So
when I moved to Boston—the city that horror movies and nightmares about
getting lost are modeled after—I stopped using GPS.
I won’t lie—it was painful as hell. I had a new job which involved
traveling all over the burbs of Boston, and I got lost every single day
for at least 4 weeks. I got lost so much, I thought I was going to lose
my job due to chronic lateness (I even got written up for it). But—in
time, I started learning my way around, due to the sheer amount of
practice I was getting at navigation using only my brain and a map. I
began to actually get a sense of where things in Boston were,
using logic and memory, not GPS. I can still remember how proud I was
the day a friend was in town visiting, and I was able to effectively
find his hotel downtown with only a name and a location description to
go on—not even an address. It was like I had graduated from navigational
awareness school.
Technology does a lot to make things in life easier, faster, more
efficient, but sometimes our cognitive skills can suffer as a result of
these shortcuts, and hurt us in the long run. Now, before everyone
starts screaming and emailing my transhumanist friends to say that I’ve
sinned by trashing tech—that’s not what I’m doing.
Look at it this way: Driving to work takes less physical energy,
saves time, and it’s probably more convenient and pleasant than walking.
Not a big deal. But if you drove everywhere you went, or spent your
life on a Segway,
even to go very short distances, you aren’t going to be expending any
physical energy. Over time, your muscles will atrophy, your physical
state will weaken, and you’ll probably gain weight. Your overall health
will probably decline as a result.
Your brain needs exercise as well. If you stop using your
problem-solving skills, your spatial skills, your logical skills, your
cognitive skills—how do you expect your brain to stay in top shape—never
mind improve? Think about modern conveniences that are helpful, but
when relied on too much, can hurt your skill in that domain. Translation
software: amazing, but my multilingual skills have declined since I
started using it more. I’ve now forced myself to struggle through
translations before I look up the correct format. Same goes for
spell-check and autocorrect. In fact, I think autocorrect was one of the
worst things ever invented for the advancement of cognition. You know
the computer will catch your mistakes, so you plug along, not even
thinking about how to spell any more. As a result of years of relying on
autocorrect and spell-check, as a nation, are we worse spellers? (I
would love someone to do a study on this.)
There are times when using technology is warranted and necessary. But
there are times when it’s better to say no to shortcuts and use your
brain, as long as you can afford the luxury of time and energy. Walking
to work every so often or taking the stairs instead of the elevator a
few times a week is recommended to stay in good physical shape. Don’t
you want your brain to be fit as well? Lay off the GPS once in a while,
and do your spatial and problem-solving skills a favor. Keep it handy,
but try navigating naked first. Your brain will thank you.
And that brings us to the last element to maximize your cognitive
potential: Networking. What’s great about this last objective is that if
you are doing the other four things, you are probably already doing
this as well. If not, start. Immediately.
By networking with other people—either through social media such as
Facebook or Twitter, or in face-to-face interactions—you are exposing
yourself to the kinds of situations that are going to make objectives
1-4 much easier to achieve. By exposing yourself to new people, ideas,
and environments, you are opening yourself up to new opportunities for
cognitive growth. Being in the presence of other people who may be
outside of your immediate field gives you opportunities to see problems
from a new perspective, or offer insight in ways that you had never
thought of before. Learning is all about exposing yourself to new things
and taking in that information in ways that are meaningful and
unique—networking with other people is a great way to make that happen.
I’m not even going to get into the social benefits and emotional
well-being that is derived from networking as a factor here, but that is
just an added perk.
Steven Johnson,
author who wrote the book "Where Good Ideas Come From", discusses the
importance of groups and networks for the advancement of ideas. If you
are looking for ways to seek out novel situations, ideas, environments,
and perspectives, then networking is the answer. It would be pretty
tough to implement this "Get Smarter" regiment without making networking
a primary component. Greatest thing about networking: Everyone involved
benefits. Collective intelligence for the win!
And I have one more thing to mention…
Remember back to the beginning of this article where I told the story
about my clients with autism spectrum disorders? Let’s think about that
for a moment, in light of everything else we discussed about how to
increase your fluid intelligence. Why were those children able to
achieve at such a high level? It was not by chance or miracle—it was
because we incorporated all of these learning principles into their
therapy program. While most other therapy providers were stuck in the "Errorless Learning" paradigm and barely-modified "Lovaas Techniques"
of Applied Behavior Analysis, we adopted and fully embraced a
multimodal approach to teaching. We made the kids struggle to learn, we
used the most creative ways we could think of, and we challenged them
beyond what they seemed capable of—we set the bar very high. But you
know what? They surpassed that bar time and time again,
and made me truly believe that amazing things are possible if you have
enough will and courage and perseverance to set yourself on that path
and stick with it. If those kids with disabilities can live this
lifestyle of constantly maximizing their cognitive potential, then so can you.
And I have a departing question for you to ponder as well: If we have
all of this supporting data, showing that these teaching methods and
ways of approaching learning can have such a profound positive effect on
cognitive growth, why aren’t more therapy programs or school systems
adopting some of these techniques? I’d love to see this as the standard
in teaching, not the exception. Let’s try something novel and shake up
the education system a little bit, shall we? We’d raise the collective
IQ something fierce.
Intelligence isn’t just about how many levels of math courses you’ve
taken, how fast you can solve an algorithm, or how many vocabulary words
you know that are over 6 characters. It’s about being able to approach a
new problem, recognize its important components, and solve it—then take
that knowledge gained and put it towards solving the next, more complex
problem. It’s about innovation and imagination, and about being able to
put that to use to make the world a better place. This is the kind of
intelligence that is valuable, and this is the type of intelligence we
should be striving for and encouraging.
This article is adapted from a presentation I gave at the Humanity + Summit at Harvard University in June 2010.
[1.] The dual n-back test, while lumped into the "brain training"
genre, is not your typical brain training game. It is specific and
complicated, uses multiple modes of stimuli, and not the type I’m
referring to when I say "brain training games".
[2.] "Openness" or novelty-seeking is not the same as thrill-seeking
behavior. The motivation for the former is driven by dopamine, and
associated with curiosity—the latter by adrenaline, and typically
associated with more dangerous activities.
About The Author: Andrea Kuszewski is a Behavior
Therapist and Consultant for children on the autism spectrum, residing
in Florida; her expertise is in Asperger’s Syndrome, or high-functioning
autism. She teaches social skills, communication, and behavior
intervention in home and community settings, training both children as
well as parents on methods of therapy. Andrea works as a researcher with
METODO Social Sciences Institute,
the U.S. branch of METODO Transdisciplinary Research Group on Social
Sciences, based in Bogotá, Colombia, investigating the neuro-cognitive
factors behind human behavior- this includes topics such as creativity,
intelligence, illegal behavior, and disorders on the
divergent-convergent thinking spectrum of schizophrenia and autism. As
well as being a researcher of creativity, she is also herself a fine
artist and has been trained in various visual communication medium,
ranging from traditional drawing to digital painting, graphic design,
and 3D modeling and animation for the medical and behavioral sciences.
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