Think your competent? doctor has EXACT PROTOCOLS to recover your 5 lost cognitive years from your stroke, I highly doubt your doctor has that. Have them prove it!
Neuroscience Reveals 4 Ways to Get Smarter, Make Better Decisions, and Stay Mentally Agile
Best of all, research shows each also contributes to living a healthier, more positive, and fulfilling life.
We all want to be smarter and more focused. We all want to make better decisions. We all want to be more mentally flexible, able to think abstractly and form new concepts.
Wanting is a lot easier than having, though, but not if you tap into the way your brain works on a neurobiological level.
Here are four research-based approaches to help you get smarter, make better choices, and stay mentally agile.
Get Smarter in 10 Minutes
If you want to increase your overall level of intelligence and increase your learning speed, a study published in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that just six to 10 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise(Did you doctor succeed at this simple task? NO? So, incompetence reigned, and s/he is still employed there? If I was as bad at programming as that, I wouldn't last longer than a week!) can improve your working memory and significantly improve higher-level cognitive skills like organization, prioritization, and planning.
If you’re wondering, “moderate exertion” involves things like fast walking. Slow jogging. Climbing stairs. Think any activity that, while not easy, will still allow you to carry on a conversation. “Vigorous exertion” is just what it sounds like: cycling, swimming, HIIT workouts, fast jogging, etc.+ a little exercise can have a negative impact on your mental abilities. The study found that cognition declined by 1 to 2 percent — not a lot, granted, but still — when eight minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity was replaced by sitting.
As the researchers write:
Relative to time spent in other behaviors, greater MVPA (moderate to vigorous physical activity) was associated with higher cognitive scores. Loss of MVPA time, given its smaller relative amount, appears most deleterious.
Efforts should be made to preserve MVPA time, or reinforce it in place of other behaviors.
Yep: If you want to get smarter, get moving for at least 10 minutes a day; or more, if you like. The study found that the more time you spend exercising, up to a point, the greater the mental benefits. (And, of course, the physical benefits.)
Other research agrees. For one thing, exercise can slow or even reverse the physical decay of your brain. Contrary to conventional wisdom, new brain cells can be created: Research shows exercise can increase the size of your hippocampus, even in your 60s and 70s, therefore mitigating the impact of age-related memory loss. (Having witnessed what dementia did to my father, that’s one of the reasons I spend about an hour exercising nearly every day.)+ed in Translational Sports Medicine found that even “aerobic exercise for two minutes at moderate-to-high intensity improved attention, concentration, and learning and memory functions for up to two hours.”
If you want a longer-term boost, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that participants who walked briskly (a target heart rate of 60 to 75 percent of max) for 40 minutes, three times a week, increased the volume of their hippocampus by slightly over two percent. While two percent isn’t much, it beats the heck out of a shrinking hippocampus.
Granted, that’s a lot of research. Bottom line, a few minutes of exercise will help improve learning and memory. A few more minutes will improve planning and organizational skills.
Movement makes you smarter. And healthier.
Pick an activity or activities you like to do. Consistency, in this and nearly everything else, is the key. Pick one thing you’ll be willing, if not happy, to do every day.
Not only will you get smarter, you’ll also be a little healthier.
Make Better Decisions by Chunking
In a landmark study, Adriaan de Groot asked expert and novice players to view a chess position for a few seconds and memorize it as best they could. Here’s what happened:
- When the position imitated the layout of a real game, the experts performed significantly better than novices. They had seen and analyzed countless chess positions. They knew and recognized patterns, and instinctively connected the new pattern to ones they already knew.
- When the position was created by placing pieces at random, the experts performed no better than novices. They couldn’t relate random patterns to anything they knew.
The grandmasters weren’t better at memorizing, but they were definitely better at chunking, parsing and grouping information in the most efficient way possible.
According to Barbara Oakley, an engineering professor at Oakland University and the author of Learning How to Learn:
Chunking is the mother of all learning — when you know something so well that it is basically a snap to call it to mind and do it or use it.
Creating neural patterns, neural chunks, underpins the development of all expertise.
That’s how extensive practice and deep experience help experts make what appear to be instinctive decisions. (Or as the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman said, “Intuition is thinking that you know without knowing why you do.”)
That’s how experienced doctors can often, within seconds, arrive at an accurate diagnosis. That’s how experienced investors quickly take advantage of a subtle market shift. That’s how experienced leaders quickly read the room to recognize conflicting agendas.
Neural chunks allow you to know, even though you may not know why you know.
So how can you better create neural chunks? One way is to follow Adam Grant’s simple three-step process:
- Learn something, and then quiz yourself. Quizzing helps you practice retrieving information (and makes it stickier).
- Teach someone else. Research shows even just expecting to teach helps you learn more effectively.
- Connect what you’ve learned to something you already know. “Associative learning” not only creates context and meaning, but also allows you to need to only remember differences and nuances. That’s how a blindfolded Magnus Carlsen can play (and win) multiple games at the same time.
The ability to make intuitive decisions isn’t a skill you either have or don’t have; the ability to make intuitive decisions is a skill that results from extensive, ongoing practice.
What matters when you need to make a quick decision isn’t that you know why you know. What matters, in the moment, is that you know.
Because then you can act on what you know.
Make Better Decisions via Circadian Rhythms
No one has an infinite supply of mental energy. Make enough decisions in one day — which, if you’re an entrepreneur, can feel like all you do all day — and decision fatigue naturally sets in. The more decisions you have to make, the harder it is to keep making smart decisions.
Neurobiology backs up that feeling. Difficult mental tasks that require focus and concentration lead to a buildup of glutamate, and too much glutamate in your system affects your lateral prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for decision-making and planning) in a significant way.
In a study published in Current Biology, one group of participants tackled difficult tasks requiring focus and concentration for six-plus hours. Another group spent the same six-plus hours doing much easier and simpler tasks. The researchers then gave participants a series of choices about whether to work harder or less hard physically and mentally and how long they were willing to delay gratification.
Unsurprisingly, the difficult-task group chose the easy routes, and took a lot less time to make those decisions.
Other studies back up the impact of decision fatigue. A study published in Chronobiology International found we tend to make smarter, more rational decisions about high-risk propositions earlier in the day. A study published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services found we’re much more likely to make impulse buying decisions at night.
In short? Get mentally tired, make poorer decisions.
Whenever possible, structure your day so you can tackle tasks requiring focus and concentration as early in your workday as possible.
Or right after lunch, when you’ve had the chance to physically and mentally recharge. A study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that a short rest period can replenish your decision-making muscles.
Do the same for important decisions. By late afternoon, you’re much more likely to choose lower-effort actions that involve shorter-term rewards.
Use the Big Three to Stay Mentally Agile
A summary of multiple studies published in Psychophysiology found that brain connectivity changes dramatically starting somewhere around the time you turn 40; that’s when your brain begins to undergo what neurologists call a “radical rewiring.”
While different parts of your brain handle different processes, as you age the number of separate domains declines. Over time what were once partitioned networks, with separate cognitive domains responsible for specialized processing, steadily become more integrated.
The resulting “generalization” negatively impacts executive function and attention: working memory, fluid intelligence, reasoning, problem-solving, the ability to think abstractly, etc.
As the researchers write:
During the early years of life, there is a rapid organization of functional brain networks. A further refinement of the functional networks then takes place until around the third and fourth decade of life.
Older adults tend to show less flexible thinking, such as forming new concepts and abstract thinking, lower response inhibition, as well as lower verbal and numeric reasoning.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that while genetics play a role, research shows the Big Three — diet, exercise, and living a broadly healthy lifestyle — can dramatically slow and even put off the effect of network consolidation and generalization:
- Diet: An International Journal of Molecular Sciences study shows eating a healthy diet can reduce age-related cognitive decline and the risk of developing various neurodegenerative diseases.
- Exercise: The PNAS study referenced above shows exercise can slow or even reverse the physical decay of your brain. And if that’s not enough, research shows exercise will also help you live longer.
- Lifestyle: A Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience study shows insufficient sleep is associated with accelerated brain atrophy and impaired brain functional connectivity; a Lancet study shows alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs directly impact the brain, causing it to age more rapidly, atrophy, and lose functioning ability.(Being retired I can now catch up on sleep as needed.)
Take on new challenges(International travel is a challenge; Last two years; Mexico, Ecuador, Bhutan, Spain, Iceland, Madeira/Portugal, Ecuador, Australia, Peru; Upcoming; Vietnam/Cambodia, South Africa/Zimbabwe). Learn new things. Build new social connections(I'm very good at this.). The greater our range of experiences, the more you’ll be able to leverage the power of chunking. See exercise, diet, and living a healthy lifestyle as good for your body and your mind.
Because they are.
This post originally appeared at inc.com.
“Click here to subscribe to the Inc. newsletter: inc.com/newsletters"
No comments:
Post a Comment