Ways to Inflate Your IQ

Your Intelligence Level Can Fluctuate, Studies Show; Battling the Post-Vacation Dip
SUE SHELLENBARGER
NOVEMBER 29, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203935604577066293669642830.html

Many people think of IQ as a genetic trait, like brown eyes or short legs: You're born with it and you're stuck with it. Now, a growing body of research is showing that a person's IQ can rise—and even fall—over the years.

Scores can change gradually or quickly, after as little as a few weeks of cognitive training, research shows. The increases are usually so incremental that they're not immediately perceptible to individuals, and the intelligence-boosting effects of cognitive training can fade after a few months.

In the latest study, 33 British students were given IQ tests and brain scans at ages 12 to 16 and again about four years later by researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London; 9% of the students showed a significant change of 15 points or more in IQ scores.

On a scale where 90 to 110 is considered average, one student's IQ rose 21 points to 128 from 107, lifting the student from the 68th percentile to the 97th compared with others the same age, says Cathy Price, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the center and co-author of the study, published last month in Nature. Another student's score skidded out of the "high average" category, to 96 from 114.

Swings in individual IQ scores are often written off as the product of measurement error or a test subject having a bad day. But MRIs in this study showed changes in gray matter in areas corresponding to fluctuations in the kids' skills, Dr. Price says. Although the sample size is small, the study drew wide attention because it is among the first to show how changes in IQ scores may be reflected in actual shifts in brain structure.

"There are many myths about IQ, such as the notion that IQ is a fixed number or that it is a crystal ball for future performance," says Eric Rossen, director of professional development and standards for the National Association of School Psychologists in Bethesda, Md.

The first reliable tests of intelligence in the U.S. were published in the early 1900s, says Alan S. Kaufman, clinical professor of psychology at Yale University and co-author of several IQ tests. Scores compare people to others of the same age based on a wide range of cognitive questions and tasks, from processing information and analyzing patterns, to solving age-appropriate math problems and recalling facts or vocabulary. A score in the 90 to 110 range is considered average. A "genius" may score 140 and above, he says.

IQ tests have been a target of ongoing criticism. Their use led to the misclassification of many children as "intellectually disabled" in the 1970s and 1980s. Similar cognitive tests used by employers to screen recruits have been attacked as discriminatory against African-American and Hispanic job candidates.

Today in schools, individual IQ-type tests are limited mainly to helping plan instruction for some children with specific learning disabilities and helping identify students for gifted programs. Kathleen Lundquist, president of APTMetrics, a Darien, Conn., human-resources consulting firm, says cognitive tests in the workplace today are often revised to eliminate adverse effects on minorities and are most often used as a screening tool for entry-level jobs.

There are practical steps people can take to see longer-term IQ changes. A 30-year study at the National Institute of Mental Health found that people whose work involves complex relationships, setting up elaborate systems or dealing with people or difficult problems, tend to perform better over time on cognitive tests. Test scores of people whose jobs are simple and require little thought actually tend to decline, according to the research, published in 1999 in Psychology and Aging.

New tasks stimulate the brain most. When researchers at the University of Hamburg subjected 20 young adults to one month of intense training in juggling, they found an increase in the corresponding gray matter in the brain as early as seven days after the training began. The added gray matter receded when the training was stopped, although the participants were still able to juggle, says the study, published in 2008 in PLoS One.

IQ tests don't measure such abilities as creativity, common sense or social sensitivity. They do assess many kinds of knowledge and abilities, including abstract reasoning skills. Rising scores in abstract reasoning are the main reason average IQ scores have been increasing by about three points every decade since the 1930s, based on studies by James Flynn, a professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. That may be partly because children spend nearly twice as many years in school, on average, than children decades ago, says Wendy M. Williams, a professor in the department of human development at Cornell University.

Schooling in general raises IQ by several points a year, based on research by Stephen Ceci, a professor of developmental psychology at Cornell, and others. "If you look at an IQ test, it asks things like, 'Who wrote Hamlet?' or 'Why do we pay for postage?' You are most likely to come across the answers in school," Dr. Ceci says. Even nonverbal abilities such as solving puzzles and spatial tasks may blossom because math classes today include visual reasoning with matrices, mazes, blocks or designs, he adds.

Intense training can raise scores. Using a method called "n-back," researchers at the University of Michigan had young adults practice recalling letter sequences by flashing a series of letters on a screen and asking them to press a key whenever they saw the same letter that appeared "n" times earlier, such as one or two times.

Training for about 25 minutes a day for eight to 19 days was linked to higher scores on tests of fluid intelligence, with gains increasing with the duration of the training, says Susanne Jaeggi, co-author of the study, published in 2008 in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.

The gains tend to fade after practice stops, based on studies of children, Dr. Jaeggi says. "You need some booster sessions" to maintain improvements, she says. Other research has found training people to switch mental tasks quickly also can lift scores.

Music lessons are linked to higher IQ throughout life, according to research by E. Glenn Schellenberg, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Six years' lessons lifted children's IQ scores an average 7.5 points; those gains eroded to two points by college age, says a study published in 2006 in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

In a study this year, researchers at the University of Kansas found practicing musicians who are active for a decade or more continue to post higher IQs beyond age 60.

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

The woman who never forgets anything

Hollywood star Marilu Henner's awesome memory is changing our understanding of the brain
David Derbyshire
4th October 2011

To read the full story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2044538/Hollywood-star-Marilu-Henners-memory-changing-understanding-brain.html

A good memory is essential for any aspiring actress struggling with her lines. But in the case of Marilu Henner - a Broadway star who rose to fame in the 1970s sitcom Taxi - her memory isn’t just good, it’s incredible. For her, the past is simply unforgettable.

Give her any date from the past 40 years and she can instantly tell you the day of the week, what she was wearing, what the weather was like and what was on TV.

If that isn’t impressive enough, the 59-year-old Hollywood star, who most recently appeared on British TV screens in Celebrity Apprentice, can even recall with complete clarity events that happened when she was just 18 months old.

Marilu Henner is one of a handful of people with a rare condition called hyperthymesia, or ‘superior autobiographical memory’ - the ability to remember everything that happened on every day of their lives.

Their cases don’t just highlight the incredible power of the mind. They are also shaking some of the basic understanding about the nature of memory and what the limits of the brain really are.

Henner regards her supercharged memory as a gift.

‘It was never a trauma for me - it was just who I was,’ she says. ‘I was very good at remembering things: I was the family historian. People would come to me and ask me stuff, and it was never a problem.’

Her earliest memory is playing with her older brother in her family’s Chicago home aged one and a half. This has stunned scientists, who had assumed that it was virtually impossible to recall events before the age of two.

And that’s just the start. Most people can remember about 250 faces during a lifetime: Henner remembers thousands.

It is impossible for most of us to imagine what it is like to have a memory of every single day. She describes sifting through memories as ‘looking for a scene on a DVD before me.

‘In a second I’m back there, looking through my own eyes at the scene as I saw it in 1980 or whenever.’

Hyperthymesia (hyper means excessive while thymesia means memory in Greek) is a new concept in psychology. It was first identified in 2006 by a team of researchers at the University of California...

Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control

The inner workings of the brain can now be read using low cost hardware
Katia Moskvitch
Technology reporter, BBC News
9 October 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15200386

You don't have to be a Jedi to make things move with your mind.

Granted, we may not be able to lift a spaceship out of a swamp like Yoda does in The Empire Strikes Back, but it is possible to steer a model car, drive a wheelchair and control a robotic exoskeleton with just your thoughts.

"The first thing is to clear your mind…to think of nothing," says Ed Jellard; a young man with the quirky title of senior inventor.

We are standing in a testing room at IBM's Emerging Technologies lab in Winchester, England.

On my head is a strange headset that looks like a black plastic squid. Its 14 tendrils, each capped with a moistened electrode, are supposed to detect specific brain signals.

In front of us is a computer screen, displaying an image of a floating cube.

As I think about pushing it, the cube responds by drifting into the distance.

Admittedly, the system needed a fair bit of pre-training to achieve this single task. But it has, nonetheless, learned to associate a specific thought pattern with a particular movement.

The headset, which was developed by Australian company Emotiv for the games industry, has been around for some time. But it is only now that companies such as IBM are beginning to harness the wealth of data that it can provide.

Using software developed in-house, researchers have linked the Emotiv to devices such as a model car, a light switch and a television.

Control signals come from two main sources; electroencephalography (EEG) measurements of brain activity, and readings of nerve impulses as they travel outwards to the muscles.

Restoring Movement

New techniques for processing such information are enabling sophisticated real world applications.

Already the team has used the system to help a patient with locked-in syndrome, whose healthy, active mind became trapped in a motionless body following a stroke.

"We linked the headset to the IBM middleware, and when he pushed the cube on the screen, that behaved like a click of the mouse - so he was able to use the computer," explained IBM's Kevin Brown.

Many commercial mind control technologies are designed to restore physical ability to those who have lost it.

At Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), researchers have applied brain-computer interface technology to create thought-controlled wheelchairs and telepresence robots.

"A disabled patient who can't move can instead navigate such a robot around his house to participate in the social life of the family," explains the team leader, Professor Jose del Millan.

"To do that, a helmet detects the intention of some physical movement and translates it into action."

Japanese company Cyberdyne is helping people who cannot walk to regain mobility by dressing them in a full-body robotic suit called Hal.

Just as some of IBM's readings come from nerve impulses, rather than brain waves, Cyberdyne uses tiny sensors on the limbs to measure the subject's intention to move, even if the physical act is impossible.

The robot body responds by moving its arms or legs. Webcams and computer screens enabling the user to pilot their machine and communicate with friends and family through their proxy body.

Outside the healthcare field, another implementation, being developed by EPFL in partnership with car maker Nissan, is an intelligent vehicle that can use brainwave data.

Supported by numerous external sensors and cameras, brain wave sensors read what the driver is planning to do next.

Having anticipated their intentions, the car takes over, eliminating the need for tedious and time consuming physical movement.

For those who prefer pedal power, Toyota is working with Saatchi & Saatchi, Parlee Cycles and DeepLocal to develop a bicycle which can shift gear based on its rider's thoughts.

Suits and microchips

Headsets and helmets offer cheap, easy-to-use ways of tapping into the mind. But there are other, more invasive techniques being developed.

At Brown Institute for Brain Science in the US, scientists are busy inserting chips right into the human brain.

The technology, dubbed BrainGate, sends mental commands directly to a PC.

Subjects still have to be physically "plugged" into a computer via cables coming out of their heads, in a setup reminiscent of the film The Matrix. However, the team is now working on miniaturising the chips and making them wireless.

BrainGate is developing ways of using the output to control a computer cursor, on-screen keyboard, and even manipulate robotic arms.

After testing it on monkeys, the scientists have now started human trials. Lead researcher Prof John Donoghue hopes that one day, his groundbreaking research will help people with spinal cord injuries or locked-in syndrome to walk again just by thinking of moving their limbs.

Robot warriors?

But extracting information from the brain, be it by internal or external sensors, is only part of the story.

Much of the current research effort is looking at how to efficiently process and utilise the vast streams of data that the brain produces.

Turning analogue thoughts into digital information links human beings directly to electronic information networks, such as the internet. The brain becomes becomes yet another sensor to be analysed and interrogated.

And as techniques for crunching that output get more sophisticated, the technology it drives will move beyond simple device control.

"People like data," said IBM's Ed Jellard. "So if you can see patterns of data, the geekier people will be very interested to see what is going on in their brain and how it is changing over time.

"I would be interest to know if my brain is getting stronger and if I have more intense thoughts. Things like that could be useful."

While it is possible to translate brain waves into machine processable data, there remains something unique and special about those signals that rocket around inside our skulls.

They are not the same as lasers in a fibre optic cable or electrons in a microprocessor, and tapping the mind will raise philosophical and ethical questions, according to Prof Noel Sharkey.

"Once the military get a hold of it, they will push it very hard," he explains.

"At the moment they are filling the airspace in Afghanistan with drones that only one person can control - but if they get the helmets well enough developed, they'll be able to control a number of planes or robot warriors directly with their thoughts."

There are also questions about what form cyber crime would take in the age of the wired mind?

"Imagine some kind of a wireless computer device in your head that you'll use for mind control - what if people hacked into that, what could they do to you and your property?," continues Prof Sharkey.

"And what if you are forced to wear a device and someone controls you with his thoughts, making you do things?..."

The possibilities, both positive and negative, are literally mind boggling.

How does the brain appreciate art?

From ScientificAmerican.com:
The notion of “the aesthetic” is a concept from the philosophy of art of the 18th century according to which the perception of beauty occurs by means of a special process distinct from the appraisal of ordinary objects. Hence, our appreciation of a sublime painting is presumed to be cognitively distinct from our appreciation of, say, an apple. The field of “neuroaesthetics” has adopted this distinction between art and non-art objects by seeking to identify brain areas that specifically mediate the aesthetic appreciation of artworks.

However, studies from neuroscience and evolutionary biology challenge this separation of art from non-art. Human neuroimaging studies have convincingly shown that the brain areas involved in aesthetic responses to artworks overlap with those that mediate the appraisal of objects of evolutionary importance, such as the desirability of foods or the attractiveness of potential mates. Hence, it is unlikely that there are brain systems specific to the appreciation of artworks; instead there are general aesthetic systems that determine how appealing an object is, be that a piece of cake or a piece of music.

We set out to understand which parts of the brain are involved in aesthetic appraisal. We gathered 93 neuroimaging studies of vision, hearing, taste and smell, and used statistical analyses to determine which brain areas were most consistently activated across these 93 studies. We focused on studies of positive aesthetic responses, and left out the sense of touch, because there were not enough studies to arrive at reliable conclusions.

The results showed that the most important part of the brain for aesthetic appraisal was the anterior insula, a part of the brain that sits within one of the deep folds of the cerebral cortex. This was a surprise. The anterior insula is typically associated with emotions of negative quality, such as disgust and pain, making it an unusual candidate for being the brain’s “aesthetic center.” Why would a part of the brain known to be important for the processing of pain and disgust turn out to the most important area for the appreciation of art?

Our interpretation of the result comes from cognitive theories of emotion that argue that aesthetic processing is, at its core, the appraisal of the value of an object -- in other words, an assessment of whether an object is “good for me” or “bad for me.” The nature of this appraisal depends very strongly on what my current physiological state is. The sight of chocolate cake will lead to positive aesthetic emotions if I’m famished but to feelings of disgust if I’m sick to my stomach. Objects that satisfy current physiological needs will lead to positive aesthetic emotions (e.g., pleasure). Those that oppose these needs will lead to negative emotions (e.g., repulsion)...

The Neuroscience of Beauty
Steven Brown and Xiaoqing Gao
September 27, 2011
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-neuroscience-of-beauty