Read more: “Instant Expert: Intelligence“
Who wouldn’t like to be more intelligent? If someone invented a safe and effective smart drug that could boost g by 20 points it would surely sell faster than Viagra. Unfortunately, everything we have learned about intelligence indicates that this is highly unlikely. If increasing intelligence is not an option, can you do more with what you have, by finding effective ways to work smarter, perhaps?
Realising your assets
IQ tests are designed to measure an individual’s maximum cognitive ability but in everyday life we rarely perform at our best. Too often we arrive at work sleep-deprived, stressed, distracted, hungry, sick, addled by medicine or hung-over – all of which reduce cognitive acuity. This is compounded by the fact that many employers fail to recognise that mental performance varies over a day or week. Organisations squander their members’ cognitive assets when they pace tasks poorly or flout normal sleep cycles, such as when schools start too early for the typical student, or when shift-workers have to put up with constantly changing schedules.
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What’s more, to fully realise their abilities, individuals of different intelligence levels often require different kinds of support. Educational and military psychologists have shown that people of below-average intelligence learn best when given concrete, step-by-step, hands-on instruction and lots of practice, whereas individuals of above-average intelligence learn best when allowed to structure their own learning. One-size-fits-all instruction stunts the learning of both types of individuals. Schools can get far more out of pupils by educating them to their personal potential and employers can boost the achievements of their staff with well-targeted assistance such as mentoring, supervision and training.
Brainpower also needs protecting and nurturing. Chronic illness, alcohol abuse and head injuries cause cumulative cognitive damage, accelerating the effects of ageing and increasing the risk of dementia. With vaccinations and care, most such assaults are preventable. We can also reduce exposure to human-made hazards that damage the brain, such as pesticides, lead, radiation and exposure to drugs in the womb. The best way to get the most from our native intelligence right into old age is to maintain good health of both body and mind. Healthy body, healthy mind is a cliché because it’s true.
Simplify your world
Modern life is becoming ever more complex. When parents have to turn to their children to operate the latest electronic gadget, technological upgrades can feel like brain downgrades. The rising complexity of daily life can be a source of humour, embarrassment and inconvenience but, given that the ability to deal with cognitive complexity is the essence of intelligence, this complexity can also be detrimental to personal well-being. One largely overlooked way we can achieve more with the intelligence we have is to recognise this and try to reduce needless complexity in everyday life.
“As modern life becomes ever more complex, technological upgrades can feel like brain downgrades”
The potentially harmful effects of cognitive overload are particularly clear in the field of healthcare. High rates of non-adherence to treatments are the bane of medical providers, and these increase when treatment plans are more complex and patients less intelligent. Given the complexity of self-care regimes, it is hardly surprising that some people make dangerous errors or fail to comply. The effective management of diabetes, for example, requires a person to keep blood sugar levels within a healthy range, which means coordinating diet, exercise and medication throughout the day, which in turn requires planning for contingencies, recognising when blood sugar is veering too high or low, knowing how to regain control and conceptualising the imperceptible but cumulative damage caused by failing to maintain control. There is no set recipe for people with diabetes to follow – their bodies and circumstances differ. Moreover, they get little training, virtually no supervision and no days off. Effectively managing your diabetes is a cognitively complex job and poor performance has serious consequences, including emergency room visits, lost limbs or eyesight, and even death. The lower the diabetic person’s IQ, the greater the risks.
Attempts to improve health outcomes in situations like this often focus on changing the behaviour of patients, but an equally effective approach might be to lower unnecessary cognitive hurdles to successful prevention, treatment and self-management of illnesses. Many doctors are unaware that even a seemingly simple prescription medicine label or appointment slip may be incomprehensible to some patients. There is wide scope to simplify the cognitive demands on patients and to provide assistance with essential tasks that are inherently complex. And patients who are very susceptible to cognitive overload can benefit from triage, with healthcare providers identifying the behaviours most critical for success and then providing training, monitoring and feedback to ensure they are mastered.
In healthcare and beyond, managing cognitive overload is a great missed opportunity, a chance to reduce the risks of illness, accidents, and premature death by reshaping everyday environments to meet people’s individual cognitive needs.
Cognitive enhancement
Brain implants, transplants and downloads may be far in the future, but other forms of cognitive enhancement have a long history. For centuries people have used brain-boosting drugs. Caffeine and nicotine, for example, both increase alertness for short periods. Today there are more choices than ever. One recent survey of US universities found that as many as 25 per cent of students routinely take Ritalin or Adderall to boost memory and concentration – both drugs are actually designed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Another favourite is modafinil, licensed to treat narcolepsy and various sleep disorders, but which can also reduce fatigue and maintain alertness in healthy individuals burning the midnight oil. There are dozens more drugs in the pipeline with the potential for cognitive enhancement – some act on the same nicotinic receptors as cigarettes; others are being developed for the express purpose of augmenting memory.
Even if they are effective, however, such drugs do not increase intelligence, they only enhance certain aspects of cognition such as memory or alertness. And there may be unknown risks associated with them, particularly those that have been developed for other purposes and have had few trials on healthy people. However much we would like to boost our brainpower, many of us are not prepared to take these risks. That might help explain the rise in recent years of so-called superfoods as a natural solution to cognitive enhancement. Unfortunately, while eating blueberries, salmon, avocados, and dark chocolate is obviously safer, it may not be as effective as many people hope. If such “brain foods” work at all, it is probably primarily by promoting general health when consumed as part of a wholesome, balanced diet.
In our desire to be cleverer we are constantly on the look-out for new cognitive enhancers. They range from the sublime, such as learning to play a musical instrument, to the impractical, such as transcranial direct current stimulation, which involves placing electrodes on the scalp to zap the brain with a tiny electrical current. Each claims to improve one or more specific abilities such as concentration, visual perception or memory, but the jury is still out on whether these improvements have real-world value.
Perhaps the most universally accessible brain toner is one of the most ancient – meditation. Growing evidence suggests that training in mindfulness meditation improves not just psychological well-being but also produces measurable improvements in a range of cognitive areas, including attention and memory, probably by reducing susceptibility to stress and distraction.
Read more: “Instant Expert: Intelligence“
