Thirty Thousand Days - Fall 2013 Vol 18 No. 1 | Page 8

How You Can Make Your
Brain Smarter Every Day
B y M i c h a e l M er z en i c h , P h . D .

I

f you’re old enough, you may remember a time, maybe
back in your childhood, when someone measured your
intelligence and assigned a number to it. I suspect that
you have been either proud of that “IQ,” or perhaps a little
bit chagrined about it, from that day to this. The general belief
back then was that intelligence was a genetic endowment,
along with eye color or a propensity for baldness.
We now know this is simply not true. Your brain —
every brain — is a work in progress. It is “plastic.” From
the day we’re born to the day we die, it continuously
revises and remodels, improving or
slowly declining, as a function of how
we use it. If a brain is exercised properly,
anyone can grow intelligence, at any age,
and potentially by a lot. Or you can just
let your brain idle — and watch it
slowly, inexorably, go to seed like a
sedentary body.
Most older brains are neglected.
They are therefore slower and less
accurate, and do a poorer job recording
useful information and controlling their
owners’ actions. The common belief, not so many years
ago, was that we older folk were just stuck with these
declining faculties. Again, we now know this is simply not
true. Your brain can be better, stronger, smarter and safer,
starting now.
The key