Intra-individual neuroplasticity and IQ—Something we can do for ourselves (and those we care about) right now
Sorry to get this one in at the last minute, but better late than..., and some of you will see this.
Many will be familiar with the Harvard psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, and professor of medicine, John Ratey, MD., from seeing his NYT bestselling books in recent years. He excels at writing for the intelligent lay audience, yet not dumbing down his books to the point where they are useless to those of us who read above the laymans’ level in much of our personal work.
I recommend his book, Spark, which is just a couple of years old. I always promise to come back and add to my posts, sometimes I even find time to do so, and will make this one a priority, because I also have a book review that I wanted to post on Amazon, 90 percent done so I have two promises to keep.
What distinguishes the book are a couple key ideas I can put down without committing 2 thousand words to it.
He presents results—which in the last couple years I have seen coming in at an accelerating pace in research papers in neurology, neurosci, cogsci, and so on—that show the human brain’s medulla—yep, that humble, fine motor control lobe, sitting at the far back and bottom of the brain, right on top of the spinal column—a very ancient structure, is extremely important to cognition, “consciousness”, learning and information processing of the sort we usualy ascribe overwhelmingly to the top and front of the brain.
That is, if Portland were frontal cortex, Ratey (and now, countless others) has shown that Florida Keys are intimately involved in cognition, even “non-motor”, semantic cognition.
He goes through the neurology, mentions some studies, reviews informally the areas of the brain involved, then goes on to show how it led him to try an experiment with high school students.
He separated the students into two groups, and carefully designed a certain kind of exercise program for one group, and left the control group out of the exercise protocols.
Not only did their grades go up, substance abuse and mood disorders etc go down, but they had in some cases up to a 10 point IQ boost, over the course of the experiment.
He talks about BDNF, of course, and several others, along with enhanced neurogenesis and so on.
Many of you might know of the studies that have been around for years about neurogenesis and exercise. One big take-home point is that neurogenesis occurs also in non-exercisers, often at nearly the same rate. But what is different in exercisers is what percent of the newly spawned neurons *survive, and are kept, and migrated into the brain’s useful areas.”
Couch potatoes and rats in cages without running wheels have neurogenesis too, but far fewer of them are kept by the brain.
What continues to be interesting is that neurons that are used in thinking areas of the brain, are effected in this way. (For, it would obviously be considerably less surprising to find that neuronal remodeling is accelerated in motor areas, by motor activity of the organism.)
I recomment grabbing the book for your kindle app or whatever cheap way you can read things. By the second chapter you will want to be lacing up your running shoes, dusting off that old mountain bike, or just taking your daily walking regime seriously. (I could hardly wait to get out the door and start moving physically.)
But you don’t have to be a marathoner or triathlete. Some of the best exercises are complex motor skills that challange balance, dexterity, etc. Just running some drone beat through a pair of headphones and zoning out on a treadmill, is less effective than things that make you focus on motor skills.
If you teach yourself to juggle, or are young enough to learn to ride a unicycle, or just practice sitting on a big exercise ball but making it challenging by holding full glasses of water in each hand and lifting one leg at a time, and trying not to spill the water, it will do the trick. It’s worth reading.
And you can read more about it on PubMed. This phenomenon of the medulla and motor areas being more important to thought, is starting to look, like not an incremental discovery, but the overturning of a significant dogma, almost like the overturning of the dogma about “no adult neurogenesis” that occurred about 1990 by the scientist at Princeton.
Spark, by John Ratey MD. It’s worth a look. Single adult, of if you have kids (or intend to someday), or are caring for aging parents, it will be worth checking out.
Intra-individual neuroplasticity and IQ—Something we can do for ourselves (and those we care about) right now
Sorry to get this one in at the last minute, but better late than..., and some of you will see this.
Many will be familiar with the Harvard psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, and professor of medicine, John Ratey, MD., from seeing his NYT bestselling books in recent years. He excels at writing for the intelligent lay audience, yet not dumbing down his books to the point where they are useless to those of us who read above the laymans’ level in much of our personal work.
I recommend his book, Spark, which is just a couple of years old. I always promise to come back and add to my posts, sometimes I even find time to do so, and will make this one a priority, because I also have a book review that I wanted to post on Amazon, 90 percent done so I have two promises to keep.
What distinguishes the book are a couple key ideas I can put down without committing 2 thousand words to it. He presents results—which in the last couple years I have seen coming in at an accelerating pace in research papers in neurology, neurosci, cogsci, and so on—that show the human brain’s medulla—yep, that humble, fine motor control lobe, sitting at the far back and bottom of the brain, right on top of the spinal column—a very ancient structure, is extremely important to cognition, “consciousness”, learning and information processing of the sort we usualy ascribe overwhelmingly to the top and front of the brain.
That is, if Portland were frontal cortex, Ratey (and now, countless others) has shown that Florida Keys are intimately involved in cognition, even “non-motor”, semantic cognition.
He goes through the neurology, mentions some studies, reviews informally the areas of the brain involved, then goes on to show how it led him to try an experiment with high school students.
He separated the students into two groups, and carefully designed a certain kind of exercise program for one group, and left the control group out of the exercise protocols.
Not only did their grades go up, substance abuse and mood disorders etc go down, but they had in some cases up to a 10 point IQ boost, over the course of the experiment.
He talks about BDNF, of course, and several others, along with enhanced neurogenesis and so on.
Many of you might know of the studies that have been around for years about neurogenesis and exercise. One big take-home point is that neurogenesis occurs also in non-exercisers, often at nearly the same rate. But what is different in exercisers is what percent of the newly spawned neurons *survive, and are kept, and migrated into the brain’s useful areas.”
Couch potatoes and rats in cages without running wheels have neurogenesis too, but far fewer of them are kept by the brain.
What continues to be interesting is that neurons that are used in thinking areas of the brain, are effected in this way. (For, it would obviously be considerably less surprising to find that neuronal remodeling is accelerated in motor areas, by motor activity of the organism.)
I recomment grabbing the book for your kindle app or whatever cheap way you can read things. By the second chapter you will want to be lacing up your running shoes, dusting off that old mountain bike, or just taking your daily walking regime seriously. (I could hardly wait to get out the door and start moving physically.)
But you don’t have to be a marathoner or triathlete. Some of the best exercises are complex motor skills that challange balance, dexterity, etc. Just running some drone beat through a pair of headphones and zoning out on a treadmill, is less effective than things that make you focus on motor skills.
If you teach yourself to juggle, or are young enough to learn to ride a unicycle, or just practice sitting on a big exercise ball but making it challenging by holding full glasses of water in each hand and lifting one leg at a time, and trying not to spill the water, it will do the trick. It’s worth reading.
And you can read more about it on PubMed. This phenomenon of the medulla and motor areas being more important to thought, is starting to look, like not an incremental discovery, but the overturning of a significant dogma, almost like the overturning of the dogma about “no adult neurogenesis” that occurred about 1990 by the scientist at Princeton.
Spark, by John Ratey MD. It’s worth a look. Single adult, of if you have kids (or intend to someday), or are caring for aging parents, it will be worth checking out.