Is it possible to use more of our brain?
-- Michael Lenneville, Washington, D.C
Barry Gordon, professor of neurology and cognitive science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, replies:
Yes! Though perhaps not how you might imagine. You can't put more of your brain to work. Your whole brain is working all the time, even when you think you're just being lazy. What you can do is make it work more productively.
There are two proved strategies to make your neural systems more efficient. The first strategy is to focus, which is hard to do. It is quite difficult to force your brain to stay on task and to shut off extraneous thoughts. Yet by concentrating, your brain can muster the neural tools it needs to tackle a complex problem. In fact, intense focus may be one reason why so-called savants become so extraordinary at performing extensive calculations or remembering a slew of facts.
The second approach is optimization. The human brain is far from an ideal "thinking machine." Our mental processes are slow, and the accuracy of our memory is far from perfect. Our intrinsic limitations are compounded by the simple mental blunders we make; these unhelpful tendencies, however, are correctable. For instance, you can become a better problem solver by looking beyond your personal biases and blind spots to consider alternative solutions. The more you learn to recognize and seek a variety of answers, the better your brain will be at finding optimal solutions.
Some proof that focus and optimization can improve the brain's performance comes from research on video gamers. Neuroscientists at the University of Rochester have shown that even novice gamers can improve cognitive skills such as perception and attention by playing action video games. These games can strengthen players' mental acuity because they require intense concentration and ruthless self-correction (otherwise, your friends shoot you!).
Sometimes, however, you may think better when you're not trying so hard. (You have to consider all the alternatives.) Periods of artistic and scientific creativity—when people often tackle the biggest, most open-ended problems—usually require letting your brain meander, percolate, chill. It may not feel like you are using more of your brain when you unleash it in this way, but one virtue of the human brain is that it often does its best work when it does not seem to be working at all.
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21 Comments
Add CommentSault, you are completely, absolutely right! Amen!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLearned a new word from the last paragraph: "creativitywhen".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...also "problemsusually".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree, and it is obvious that the conservatives do not use their brains to think with. I doubt if they can understand anything that's in this article...they are perfect, you know...the problem solvers of all that's wrong with America. To the conservatives, all problems can be solved by "Drill baby drill!!!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLol, sault when you warmists give up your cars, houses, medicine, the multitude of materials made from plastic(oil if you didn't know) and basically are all living with the Amish on subsistence farming, then maybe your ridiculous comment will at least be less hypocritical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact, warmists are exactly as unoptimized in their thinking as this article would indicate for the less intellectually gifted. You people "believe" in only one possible cause of global warming and as far as you are concerned your computer model fake planet is the only "proof" you need for that. Even though there is plenty of evidence or reasonable and untested hypothesis out there that would indicate CO2 is at best a minor cause and more likely the result of warming, with some other causes as the culprits. But you people are so narrow minded you have lost the ability to think. Then your narrow minded heads are comming up with so called solutions to warming, like CFL light bulbs which will likely do far more damage to the environment than global warming itself. What is the point of fixing the climate by spreading mercury everywhere or what do you think will happen in 50 years when we have all electric cars and those giant batteries start piling up by the millions somewhere leaking who knows what into the water table along with the landfills full of cfl light bulbs spewing mercury into the water table.
So yeah, lets have a toxic wasteland of a planet but at least you warmists will have "stopped" global warming.
Personally, I would prefer the warming over releasing the chemicals of your solutions into the environment.
Also, did you warmists ever consider what happens without plastic? have to drill for that. Even if we stop using oil for fuels, we will still be fracking and etc to make enough plastic to support the future 14 billion people on this planet.
Maybe you warmists should open your minds to ideas and optimize your brains instead of letting fake planets built in computer models spew out fortune cookie predictions that you people turn into your bible to believe in.
do you expect people to take you seriously when you make such stupid statements? once again the liberal leftist knows what is best for us and we had better comply or risk being labelled a heretic and end up getting burned at the stake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think particular times in the early morning or evening also play an important role in optimized working and concentration of the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, okay, you can improve efficiency (will your wages increase?) but you can't use "more." Teabaggers have proved, however, than you can definitely use much much less. They deserve honorary memberships in the APA. And to the re-mouthers of the "warmist" appellation, my words from you come straight from the venerated Rush Lowblow: sluts, Oil whores, pigs, and Koch lickers. :}
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQ. Is it possible to use more of our brain?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA. Obviously, not in all cases...
"Brain and brain! What is brain?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-- Kara, in Star Trek episode 'Spock's Brain'
if you masters of intellect know so much then how is it that this nation was built upon the work of conservative principals? people like you do not even know what is good for yourself much less the rest of us. however, since your only argument seems to be based upon labeling people who you think are intellectually inferior I am going to have to question the amount of your brain that is functioning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean I could see why people think that it is somehow unfair that some of us actually get off of our backside each day and go to work and pay our taxes (although apparently 34% of my income is not enough) to support those of our fellow americans that are too lazy to do so. while everyone needs a helping hand once in a while it is not incumbent upon me to forgo my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to support someone else's unmotivated lifestyle. I guess that it is not fair for me to have gone to school and then went out and got a job instead of sitting around and watching daytime tv and drinking and smoking and living on the government dole.
I am sure that the spending policies of the current administration, along with the shady deals with the unions and their cronies, have nothing to do with this mess. I guess that we should just keep extending unemployment so that the democrats can get enough of the voters on the take so that they are perpetually in power. Unfortunately that is going to end in trouble per the current predicament that Greece finds it self in. If I recall correctly they have been practicing socialism, much like what I find the left wanting to do in this country, and it has been a disaster. The funny thing is that the current administration can't even see that it is just following the failed social experiment in europe right to hell.
Leave it to the Americans to turn every subject into some political review. Get over yourselves already. Left, right or centre, politics is simple minded tom foolery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA good fraction of you commenters spend an inordinate amount of time and energy hurling invective back and forth. Aside from being fairly annoying, this is actually pretty scary and saddening. What I mean by
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is that you are all complicit in severely coarsening a necessary public dialog. I suspect that some of you might be more right than wrong in certain broad interpretations of the state of the world. But in some deep sense, your 'opponents' also have much to say, to
be listened to and considered. All of us, without
exception, on all sides, are clearly deeply concerned with all of these issues. But any possibility of finding fair, honorable and organic solutions requires far higher levels of civility and decency than we've been showing. I have been guilty also. It's easier to compose clever and demonizing invective than to take the time to consider that in general, all sides have some part of
the truth. To take the time to locate and consider all of those different kernels of truth in any meaningful, democratic resolution of conflicts and questions.
Conflict is okay. It's the current isolating, demonizing vitriol that's not okay.
I'm often reminded of Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds
in this regard. When I indulge in feelings of rage, contempt or self-congratulatory superiority vis-a-vis world issues, it helps to center me and regain some humility to remember that it takes a hell of a lot of independent, even opposed, minds, to arrive eventually
at some truth, not only in science, but perhaps more crucially, in all societal issues in general. The fact that we clearly lack such a fair and self-correcting egalitarian climate doesn't mean we can't forge it.
Peace.
Leaping Lizards Batman! I've never seen comments on such a completely unrelated topic jump to Global Warming so fast. Utterly amazing (I'll use 2 exclamation points here to really, really mean it!!) I mean, the dedication of these posters is incredible, they must think posting against/for/whatever GLOBAL WARMING (have to capitalise the WHOLE thing for emphasise, right?) is more important than going out and having sex!!! These people need to get a ... wait a sec... actualy, these people need, and I mean really, really, really NEED to keep posting about Global Warming in every article, no matter how unrelated to anything remotely about Global Warming. The future of humanity is at stake!!!! Keep Posting!!!!! It's way more important than going out and having sex, really, stay home, read articles about brains, make sure you respond first and post about global warming, every time, article after article. It will be good for humanity, at least our genes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease obtain a more representative sample before categorically generalizing. You people think you're so superior!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaha wow man, the only thing I agree with you on is global warming isnt just caused by greenhouse gases, I do however find all the name calling VERY funni, what are we 3? liberal lefts are idiots, no conservative rights are dumb, come on people, altho conservatives ARE dumber than liberals there has been a study to show this, Conservative have a low iq, its not about what political party you are, it doesnt matter WHO as long as there for the people & for the better of all, and btw priddseren big oil is limiting progress, hemp can make fuel WAY more earth friendly & efficient than oil & medication? if your dumb enough to think pharma meds are medicine, than that pretty much shows how stupid you are, natural medicine is MUCH better & cures just about anything we run into to day, pharma is a treatment & symptom management BUSINESS, so basically a world without oil holding a monopoly on energy is prob the best thing that could happen my friend, you reading a science mag SHOULD understand that
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbout the articles yes, I use my brain better than most people as I take care of it VERY well, I use numerous nootropics, alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, Ginkgo biloba, ect, eat a organic simi raw diet, rich in super foods, nuts, seeds & fruits, I frequently meditate & occasionally use psychedelics, I take hemp oil among other things everyday which has the most balanced efas content & read(mostly online news & science articles) & watch alot of documentaries for learning & am a computer nerd so I am usually problem solving so it gives me exercise, I do have however a VERY philosophical/logical mind, Ive never really got things like social rules but regularly question things, I HAVE to know how stuff works, I LOVE thinking about alt states of consciousness & whats REALLY there not just what our senses tell us is there, things like what is time really
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbout the articles yes, I use my brain better than most people as I take care of it VERY well, I use numerous nootropics, alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, Ginkgo biloba, ect, eat a organic simi raw diet, rich in super foods, nuts, seeds & fruits, I frequently meditate & occasionally use psychedelics, I take hemp oil among other things everyday which has the most balanced efas content & read(mostly online news & science articles) & watch alot of documentaries for learning & am a computer nerd so I am usually problem solving so it gives me exercise, I do have however a VERY philosophical/logical mind, Ive never really got things like social rules but regularly question things, I HAVE to know how stuff works, I LOVE thinking about alt states of consciousness & whats REALLY there not just what our senses tell us is there, things like what is time really
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not know if it is possible to use more of my brain. It was possible to change the way various parts functioned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a traffic accident, I lost the left lobe, Brocas Area, and Wernekies area. I took Spanish. To understand what people were saying, I would translate it into Spanish and then back translate it into English. Since I could no longer formulate ideas in English, I would formulate them in Spanish and then quickly translate them into English. I was slow at first, but I got faster.
I carry a note pad. When I hear someone's name, I write it down and then I read it. That way I bypass the missing left lobe and can associate a name with a face and can remember a name.
I have bypassed the parts of my brain that normally serve a particular purpose and learned to use different parts. They do not work as well as the parts designed for the particular purpose, but they allow me to function. That is important.
Sometimes I wonder what the real function is of the areas that I have diverted for other purposes.
Excellent comment. Informative and on topic which is more than most of the comments in this thread.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould you expand a bit on your english-spanish-english device for maintaining your ability to engage in conjecture. At least I think that's what you were describing.
Is it possible to use more of our brain?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGoing by some of the crap on here about the AGW I would have to say NO! But I know better. After a Motorbike accident in 76 in which I suffered brain damage I had to work hard to recover language skills, I had been multi lingual, but after the accident I literally had to learn to speak English again, I never learnt to speak French again though.
As a child of 9 I was told I had an IQ of 148, what ever that meant, and made a member of Mensa, but as an adult I never followed it up, so I suppose I can’t be that smart. But after a second motorbike accident in 99 and another head injury I had another IQ and I had decreased down to 143, which they put down to the head injuries. But with constant reading and brain training I have regained a few more points in the last couple of years even though I am now 54. so YES you can learn to use more of your brain.
It’s just a pity that some of the people on here don’t learn to use their brains for themselves and start thinking instead of espousing crap that they have read or heard from other AGW warmists. By the time I read this thread fortunately sault’s crap had already been removed; once again; one day he might actually learn to use his brain for himself and wake up. Why does he have to use every post to open his crap? Can we not have a Scientific post without such discourse.
As for cgsarebeast, I will admit I had to look up what nootropics were, but after searching about fifty pages from scientific reviews to pages espousing them and wikipedia, I find it hard to believe anyone would be stupid enough to believe in them. And to quote him “I use my brain better than most people as I take care of it VERY well, I use numerous nootropics, alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, Ginkgo biloba, etc, eat a organic simi raw diet, rich in super foods, nuts, seeds & fruits, I frequently meditate & occasionally use psychedelics,” . and he wants us to take him serious? This is person admitting to taking illicit drugs, probably to excess and expects us to accept he takes care of his body and is a rational, intelligent person! That is an oxy-moron if there if was one. And for you brain dead warmists that means they mean the opposite to each other.