There are many techniques you can use to temporarily increase your brainpower. These include problem solving techniques, exercises in imagination, and stimulants like deep breathing or caffeine. Some argue that these don’t actually increase IQ, but only temporarily improve performance. But since you can choose to use them all the time, including during IQ tests, the improvement can be permanent.
Of course, to do anything consistently and repeatedly over time is a difficult goal. What if you want to make real and permanent improvements? Can you increase brainpower permanently, or at least as permanently as things can be for mortals?
Yes, you can change the physical structure of your brain, in order to improve its function. There are two basic ways to do it. The first is to physically build and strengthen your brain with mental exercises. The second is to strengthen it by doing certain physical exercises.
Mental Exercises To Increase Brainpower
Mental exercises do not just create temporary changes in your thinking. Exercising the brain has been shown in many studies to actually generate new neuronal growth. It has even been shown to halt the decline of mental function that often comes with age.
What mental exercises should you do? Ideally ones that you enjoy, because you will get more involved and be more likely to keep doing them. There have been many activities used to test neuronal growth that results from exercising the brain. No specific ones have been singled out as more effective yet, so we are left using our common sense.
Watching TV, for example, is not mental exercise, because it is too passive. Doing crossword puzzles certainly is good mental exercise, as is playing word games, arguing philosophy, or doing mental math while driving. Other possibilities include learning and using memory techniques, habitually redesigning things in your imagination, and inventing lyrics as you sing a song.
Physical Exercises To Increase Brainpower
Physical exercise has been shown to improve brain function indirectly. This is easy to understand. A better cardiovascular system means better blood flow, and it is blood that carries that much-needed oxygen to the brain. Of course, this better oxygen supply to the brain will persist only as long as you stay in shape. Are there physical exercises or activities that will make more permanent changes in the brain?
Yes. Activities which involve timing and coordination cause dendrite growth in the brain, resulting in more possible connections in your brain. Having more connections means learning and thinking can be more flexible and efficient. Physical exercise, then, can increase brainpower - if it is the right type.
Athletic activities likely to help include tennis, basketball, soccer, and tossing around a frisbee. Less athletic activities that require a lot of coordination and timing will also accomplish the same thing. These include playing musical instruments, especially those that require precise timing, like piano playing. You can also try activities which involve hand-eye coordination, like painting or drawing.
Meditation, which is part physical and part mental activity, also changes the structure of the brain. Recent research shows that it increases the thickness of the cortex in those areas that are involved in sensory processing and attention - the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula. Other studies show that highly skilled musicians and linguists also have thickening in the relevant areas of the cortex.
Bottom line? Areas of the brain that you exercise grow bigger, from new neurons, and from bigger blood vessels and supporting structures like glia and astrocytes, and from increased branching and connections. It is clear that you can increase your brainpower by physically improving your brain.
About the Author
Copyright Steve Gillman. For more on How To Increase Brain Power, and to get the Brain Power Newsletter and other free gifts, visit: http://www.IncreaseBrainPower.com
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