"1 should not pursue goals that are hands achieved. I must develop an instinct for what i can simply barely achieve through ane'due south greatest efforts." —Albert Einstein

While Einstein was non a neuroscientist, he sure knew what he was talking about in regards to the human capacity to reach. He knew intuitively what we tin now show with information—what information technology takes to function at your cognitive best. In essence: What doesn't impale you makes you smarter.

Non and so many years agone, I was told by a professor of mine that you lot didn't have much control over your intelligence. It was genetic—adamant at nascency. He explained that efforts fabricated to raise the intelligence of children (through programs like Head Start, for case) had express success while they were in practice, and furthermore, one time the "training" stopped, they went right back to their previously low cognitive levels. Indeed, the data did bear witness that [pdf], and he (along with many other intelligence researchers) ended that intelligence could not be improved—at to the lowest degree not to create a lasting change.

Well, I disagreed.

You lot see, before that point in my studies, I had begun working as a Behavior Therapist, grooming young children on the autism spectrum. These kids had a range of cognitive disabilities—my chore was to train them in any and all areas that were deficient, to get them as close to performance at the same level of their peers as possible. Therapy utilized a diversity of methods, or Multimodal Teaching (using as many modes of input as possible), in club to make this happen.

One of my first clients was a little boy westward/ PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Delays-Non 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 nearly three years— 1 on one, instruction in areas such as communication, reading, math, social performance, play skills, leisure activities—using multimodal techniques [pdf] —he was retested. His IQ score was well over 100 (with 100 considered "boilerplate", as compared to the general population). That's a 20 point increase, more than one standard divergence 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 run into many children grow by leaps and bounds—not by magic, and not even past taking medication, and there'south information to show proof of their gains. I idea—if these kids with astringent learning impediments could make such amazing progress, with that progress carrying over into every aspect of their cerebral functioning—why can't an boilerplate 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 nonetheless believed it was possible to significantly increase your cognitive functioning, given the proper preparation—since I had seen it with my own eyes through my piece of work equally a therapist.

Then in 2008, a very heady study was published, Improving Fluid Intelligence with Training on Working Retentivity, by Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, and Perrig. This written report was pretty much a game-changer for those doing research on this topic. They showed for the outset fourth dimension, that it might actually be possible to increase your intelligence to a significant caste through training. What did they practise dissimilar?

The subjects in Jaeggi'southward study were trained on an intensive, multimodal (visual and auditory input) working memory task (the dual-n-back) [ane] for variable lengths of fourth dimension, for either 1 or ii weeks, depending on the group. Following this training, they were tested to see how much they improved. As one would expect, subsequently training, their scores on that job got ameliorate. But they went a stride further. They wanted to run into if those gains on the training task could transfer to an increase in skill on a completely different exam of cognitive power, which would bespeak an increase in overall cognitive ability. What did they find?

Following preparation of working retentiveness using the dual n-back exam, the subjects were indeed able to transfer those gains to a pregnant comeback in their score on a completely unrelated cerebral job. This was a super-big deal.

Here'southward the graph of their results, and you tin can read well-nigh the entire report here.

What is "Intelligence"?

First of all, permit me explain what I mean when I say the word "intelligence". To be articulate, I'1000 not simply talking about increasing the volume of facts or bits of noesis you can accumulate, or what is referred to as crystallized intelligence—this isn't fluency or memorization training—it's about the reverse, actually. I'm talking about increasing your fluid intelligence, or your chapters to learn new information, retain it, then use that new noesis as a foundation to solve the next problem, or learn the next new skill, and so on.

Now, while working retentiveness is not synonymous with intelligence, working memory correlates with intelligence to a large degree. In order to generate successfully intelligent output, a expert working memory is pretty important. And so to make the most of your intelligence, improving your working retentivity volition help this significantly—like using the very best and latest parts to assist a machine to perform at its peak.

The take-abode points from this research? This report is relevant because they discovered:

i. Fluid intelligence is trainable.

2. The training and subsequent gains are dose-dependent—meaning, the more y'all railroad train, the more you lot proceeds.

3. Anyone tin can increment their cognitive ability, no matter what your starting betoken is.

4. The outcome can be gained by training on tasks that don't resemble the exam questions.

How Can I Put This Research To Practical Use For My Ain Benefit?

There is a reason why the dual north-back task was so successful at increasing cognitive ability. Information technology involves dividing your attention between competing stimuli, multimodal in fashion (i visual, one auditory). It requires you to focus on specific details while ignoring irrelevant information, which helps to improve your working retentiveness over fourth dimension, gradually increasing your ability to multi-task the data effectively. In addition, the stimulus was constantly switched, and then there was never a "training to the test questions" phenomenon—information technology was always different. If you lot've never taken the dual due north-back examination, permit me tell you this: It's wicked hard. I'm non surprised at that place was so much cognitive gain from practicing this activity.

But let's think practically.

Somewhen, you will run out of cards in the deck or sounds in the assortment (the experiment lasted 2 weeks), then it isn't applied to recall that if you want to continually increase your brain power over the course of your lifetime, that the dual northward-back alone will do the fox. Too, yous'll go bored with it and stop doing it. I know I would. Non to mention the time it takes to railroad train in this action—we all take busy lives! And then we demand to think of how to simulate the same types of heavy-duty encephalon thrashing—using multimodal methods—that tin can be practical to your normal life, while notwithstanding maintaining the maximum benefits, in order to become the cerebral growth.

Then—taking all of this into account, I take come up with five primary elements involved in increasing your fluid intelligence, or cognitive ability. Similar I said, it would be impractical to constantly practice the dual due north-back task or variations thereof every day for the residue 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 tin exist implemented every day, to go 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

two. Claiming Yourself

3. Recall Creatively

four. Do Things The Hard Mode

v. Network

Any one of these things by itself is groovy, but if y'all actually want to function at your accented cognitive best, you should do all five, and as oftentimes as possible. In fact, I live my life past these five principles. If you adopt these every bit fundamental guidelines, I guarantee you will be performing at your meridian power, surpassing even what you believe you are capable of—all without artificial enhancement. Best part: Science supports these principles past way of data!

1. Seek Novelty

Information technology is no coincidence that geniuses similar 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 just one trait out of the "Big Five" from the Five Factor Model of personality (Acronym: Bounding main, 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 appoint in, new things to learn—new experiences in general [ii].

When you seek novelty, several things are going on. First of all, yous are creating new synaptic connections with every new action you lot engage in. These connections build on each other, increasing your neural activity, creating more connections to build on other connections—learning is taking identify.

An expanse of interest in contempo 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 ways how much new information you are able to take in, and if you lot are able to retain it, making lasting changes to your brain. Constantly exposing yourself to new things helps puts your encephalon in a primed state for learning.

Novelty also triggers dopamine (I have mentioned this earlier in other posts), which not only kicks motivation into high gear, but information technology stimulates neurogenesis—the creation of new neurons—and prepares your brain for learning. All you need to do is feed the hunger.

Fantabulous learning condition = Novel Activity—>triggers dopamine—>creates a college motivational state—>which fuels date and primes neurons—>neurogenesis tin take place + increase in synaptic plasticity (increase in new neural connections, or learning).

Every bit a follow-up of the Jaeggi study, researchers in Sweden [pdf] plant that after 14 hours of training working retentiveness over 5 weeks' fourth dimension, there was an increase of dopamine D1 binding potential in the prefrontal and parietal areas of the encephalon. This particular dopamine receptor, the D1 type, is associated with neural growth and evolution, among other things. This increment in plasticity, allowing greater bounden of this receptor, is a very good thing for maximizing cognitive operation.

Take home bespeak: Be an "Einstein". Ever look to new activities to engage your mind—aggrandize your cognitive horizons. Learn an instrument. Have an art class. Go to a museum. Read about a new area of scientific discipline. Be a knowledge junkie.

ii. Challenge Yourself

There are absolutely oodles of terrible things written and promoted on how to "railroad train your encephalon" to "get smarter". When I speak of "encephalon training games", I'one thousand 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 fourth dimension" (complete oxymoron, regarding increasing noesis). I'thou going to shatter some of that stuff you've previously heard virtually brain training games. Hither goes: They don't piece of work. Individual brain training games don't make you lot smarter—they make you more proficient at the encephalon training games.

At present, they practise serve a purpose, but it is brusque-lived. The key to getting something out of those types of cognitive activities sort of relates to the outset principle of seeking novelty. Once you main 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 motion along to the next type of challenging game. In that location is research that supports this logic.

A few years ago, scientist Richard Haier wanted to see if you could increase your cerebral ability by intensely grooming on novel mental activities for a menstruum 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 lot believe they exist?!). What they found, was that subsequently training for several weeks on the game Tetris, the subjects experienced an increment in cortical thickness, as well as an increase in cortical activity, every bit evidenced by the increase in how much glucose was used in that area of the brain. Basically, the encephalon used more energy during those training times, and bulked up in thickness—which means more neural connections, or new learned expertise—afterwards this intense training. And they became experts at Tetris. Cool, right?

Here'southward the thing: Afterward that initial explosion of cognitive growth, they noticed a decline in both cortical thickness, likewise equally the amount of glucose used during that job. All the same, they remained just as practiced at Tetris; their skill did not decrease. The brain scans showed less encephalon activeness during the game-playing, instead of more, equally in the previous days. Why the driblet? Their brains got more efficient. In one case their brain figured out how to play Tetris, and got really skilful at it, it got lazy. It didn't need to work as hard in social club to play the game well, so the cerebral energy and the glucose went somewhere else instead.

Efficiency is non your friend when information technology comes to cognitive growth. In lodge to keep your brain making new connections and keeping them active, y'all need to proceed moving on to another challenging action every bit shortly as you lot reach the point of mastery in the ane y'all are engaging in. You lot want to be in a abiding land 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 dorsum to this point later on on.

3. Think Creatively

When I say thinking creatively will help you achieve neural growth, I am non talking about painting a motion-picture show, or doing something artsy, like we discussed in the offset principle, Seeking Novelty. When I speak of artistic thinking, I am talking nearly creative cognition itself, and what that means every bit far equally the process going on in your brain.

Reverse to popular belief, creative thinking does not equal "thinking with the right side of your brain". It involves recruitment from both halves of your encephalon, non merely the right. Creative cognition involves divergent thinking (a wide range of topics/subjects), making remote associations between ideas, switching dorsum and forth between conventional and unconventional thinking (cognitive flexibility), and generating original, novel ideas that are also appropriate to the action you are doing. In social club 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 Footstep (Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise) Center, in Boston. Sternberg has been on a quest to non only understand the fundamental concept of intelligence, but also to find ways in which whatever one person tin 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 eye is that abilities are not stock-still simply 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 tin help people essentially modify their abilities then that they can exist better able to face up the tasks and situations they're going to confront in life."

As part of a research written report, The Rainbow Project [pdf], he created not but innovative methods of artistic didactics in the classroom, but generated assessment procedures that tested the students in ways that got them to think most the problems in creative and practical ways, as well as analytical, instead of but memorizing facts.

Sternberg explains,

"In the Rainbow Projection nosotros created assessments of creative and practical besides equally analytical abilities. A creative examination might be: 'Hither'south a drawing. Caption it.' A applied 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 past educational activity students to think creatively (and practically) about a trouble, as well as for memory, he could get them to (i) Acquire more most 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 instruction and assessment methods, he could preclude "didactics to the test" and get the students to actually learn more in general. He collected data on this, and boy, did he get keen results.

In a nutshell? On average, the students in the test group (the ones taught using creative methods) received college final grades in the college course than the control group (taught with traditional methods and assessments). Only—only to make things off-white— he also gave the test group the very same analytical-type exam that the regular students got (a multiple choice test), and they scored college on that test as well. That ways they were able to transfer the knowledge they gained using creative, multimodal teaching methods, and score college on a completely different cognitive exam of accomplishment on that same material. Sound familiar?

4. Exercise Things the Hard Way

I mentioned earlier that efficiency is non 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 free 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 1 of those people GPS was invented for. My sense of direction is terrible. I get lost all the fourth dimension. So when GPS came forth, I was thanking my lucky stars. But you know what? Later on using GPS for a brusque time, I constitute that my sense of direction was worse. If I failed to have it with me, I was fifty-fifty more than lost than before. So when I moved to Boston—the urban center that horror movies and nightmares about getting lost are modeled afterward—I stopped using GPS.

I won't lie—it was painful as hell. I had a new chore which involved traveling all over the burbs of Boston, and I got lost every single twenty-four hours for at to the lowest degree 4 weeks. I got lost so much, I thought I was going to lose my task 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 practise I was getting at navigation using but my brain and a map. I began to actually go a sense of where things in Boston were, using logic and memory, non GPS. I can still recollect 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 proper name and a location description to go on—non even an address. It was like I had graduated from navigational sensation school.

Technology does a lot to make things in life easier, faster, more efficient, but sometimes our cognitive skills tin suffer every bit a outcome of these shortcuts, and hurt us in the long run. At present, before everyone starts screaming and emailing my transhumanist friends to say that I've sinned by trashing tech—that's not what I'chiliad doing.

Expect at information technology this way: Driving to work takes less concrete energy, saves time, and it'south 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 curt distances, you aren't going to be expending any physical energy. Over time, your muscles will cloudburst, your physical state volition weaken, and y'all'll probably gain weight. Your overall health will probably decline as a upshot.

Your encephalon needs practice every bit well. If you lot stop using your problem-solving skills, your spatial skills, your logical skills, your cognitive skills—how exercise you expect your brain to stay in elevation shape—never mind amend? Think about modern conveniences that are helpful, simply when relied on too much, tin hurt your skill in that domain. Translation software: amazing, merely 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 right format. Same goes for spell-check and autocorrect. In fact, I think autocorrect was one of the worst things e'er invented for the advocacy of cognition. Yous know the computer will take hold of your mistakes, so you plug along, not even thinking well-nigh how to spell whatsoever more. As a result of years of relying on autocorrect and spell-check, every bit a nation, are we worse spellers? (I would love someone to practice a report on this.)

In that location are times when using engineering science is warranted and necessary. But in that location are times when it's meliorate to say no to shortcuts and use your encephalon, as long as you tin afford the luxury of time and energy. Walking to work every and then ofttimes or taking the stairs instead of the elevator a few times a week is recommended to stay in adept concrete shape. Don't yous desire your encephalon to be fit as well? Lay off the GPS once in a while, and do your spatial and problem-solving skills a favor. Keep information technology handy, but try navigating naked offset. Your brain will thank you.

5. Network

And that brings us to the concluding element to maximize your cognitive potential: Networking. What's great about this concluding objective is that if you lot are doing the other four things, y'all are probably already doing this also. If non, start. Immediately.

Past networking with other people—either through social media such as Facebook or Twitter, or in face up-to-confront interactions—you are exposing yourself to the kinds of situations that are going to make objectives 1-four much easier to reach. 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 exterior of your immediate field gives you lot opportunities to come across issues from a new perspective, or offer insight in ways that you had never idea of before. Learning is all virtually exposing yourself to new things and taking in that information in ways that are meaningful and unique—networking with other people is a bang-up way to brand that happen. I'1000 not even going to get into the social benefits and emotional well-being that is derived from networking as a gene here, merely that is just an added perk.

Steven Johnson, writer who wrote the book "Where Good Ideas Come From", discusses the importance of groups and networks for the advocacy of ideas. If you lot are looking for means to seek out novel situations, ideas, environments, and perspectives, so networking is the answer. It would be pretty tough to implement this "Get Smarter" regiment without making networking a primary component. Greatest thing nigh networking: Everyone involved benefits. Collective intelligence for the win!

And I have i more thing to mention…

Remember back to the offset of this commodity where I told the story about my clients with autism spectrum disorders? Let's think almost that for a moment, in low-cal of everything else nosotros discussed almost how to increase your fluid intelligence. Why were those children able to accomplish at such a high level? Information technology was not past run a risk or miracle—it was considering we incorporated all of these learning principles into their therapy program. While near other therapy providers were stuck in the "Errorless Learning" prototype and barely-modified "Lovaas Techniques" of Applied Behavior Analysis, we adopted and fully embraced a multimodal arroyo to teaching. We made the kids struggle to learn, nosotros used the near creative means we could recall of, and we challenged them beyond what they seemed capable of—nosotros set up the bar very loftier. But yous know what? They surpassed that bar time and time over again, and made me truly believe that astonishing things are possible if yous take enough volition 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, and so so tin can you.

And I have a parting question for you to ponder also: If we have all of this supporting data, showing that these didactics methods and ways of budgeted learning tin 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 honey to see this equally the standard in instruction, not the exception. Let's try something novel and milkshake up the teaching organization a little bit, shall we? Nosotros'd enhance the collective IQ something vehement.

Intelligence isn't just most how many levels of math courses you've taken, how fast yous can solve an algorithm, or how many vocabulary words y'all know that are over 6 characters. Information technology's about being able to arroyo a new problem, recognize its important components, and solve information technology—then take that knowledge gained and put it towards solving the next, more complex problem. Information technology'south most innovation and imagination, and about existence able to put that to utilise to brand the world a better place. This is the kind of intelligence that is valuable, and this is the type of intelligence nosotros should be striving for and encouraging.

This article is adapted from a presentation I gave at the Humanity + Summit at Harvard Academy in June 2010.

[1.] The dual north-back test, while lumped into the "brain training" genre, is not your typical encephalon preparation game. It is specific and complicated, uses multiple modes of stimuli, and not the type I'chiliad 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 erstwhile is driven by dopamine, and associated with curiosity—the latter by adrenaline, and typically associated with more dangerous activities.

Works Cited:

Garlick, D. (2002). Understanding the Nature of the General Gene of Intelligence: The Role of Individual Differences in Neural Plasticity as an Explanatory Mechanism. Psychological Review, 109, no.1 , 116-136.

Haier, R. E. (2007). The Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) of Intelligence: Converging Neuroinaging Evidence. Behavioral and Encephalon Sciences, 135-187.

Haier, R. J. (1993). Cognitive glucose metabolism and intelligence. In P. A. Vernon, Biological approaches to the study of human intelligence (pp. 317-373). Norwood, N. J.: Ablex.

Susanne M. Jaeggi, M. B. (2008). Improving Fluid intelligence With Grooming on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0801268105

Ramey, C. T. (1998). Early on Intervention and Early Feel. American Psychologist, 109-120.

Sternberg, R. (2008). Increasing Fluid Intelligence is Possible After All. PNAS, 105, no. 19 , 6791- 6792.

Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Implicit Theories of Intelligence, Creativity, and Wisdom. Periodical of Personality and Social Psychology, 49 , 607-627.

Sternberg, R. J. (1999). The Theory of Sucessful Intelligence. Review of General Psychology, three , 292-316.

Weinberg, R. (1989). Intelligence and IQ. American Psychologist, 98-104.

Image Credits: Andrea Kuszewski

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'south Syndrome, or high-operation autism. She teaches social skills, communication, and behavior intervention in home and customs settings, grooming both children likewise every bit parents on methods of therapy. Andrea works equally a researcher with METODO Social Sciences Institute, the U.Due south. branch of METODO Transdisciplinary Research Grouping on Social Sciences, based in Bogotá, Colombia, investigating the neuro-cognitive factors behind human being behavior- this includes topics such equally inventiveness, intelligence, illegal behavior, and disorders on the divergent-convergent thinking spectrum of schizophrenia and autism. Besides as beingness a researcher of creativity, she is besides 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 blitheness for the medical and behavioral sciences. She blogs at The Rogue Neuron and tweets as @AndreaKuszewski.

The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.