Not All Enhancement Is External

Cognitive-enhancement can result just as readily (if not as easily) from within the body as it can external chemicals. Meditation, getting enough sleep, nutrition, and a litany of other things are known to help cognition and mental function. SciAm covers the age-old truism that what’s good for the body is good for the mind, reminding us that the brain is very much a part of the body and that the body’s systems respond to the condition of the mind. Freud and Merleau-Ponty both opined on this idea (bodily ego, corporeal schema) but the SciAm article thankfully cites some evidence. The article focuses in particular on elderly minds:

Over the past decade several studies have underscored the link between physical activity and cognition. For instance, in a study published in 2001 neuropsychiatrist Kristine Yaffe of the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues recruited 5,925 women older than 65 at four different medical centers across the U.S. The participants were all free of any physical disability that would limit their ability to walk or pursue other physical activities. The volunteers were also screened to ensure that they did not have a cognitive impairment. The researchers then assessed their physical activity by asking the women how many city blocks they walked and how many flights of stairs they climbed daily and gave them a questionnaire to fill out about their levels of participation in 33 different physical activities. After six to eight years, the researchers assessed the women’s level of cognitive function. The most active women had a 30 percent lower risk of cognitive decline. Interestingly, walking distance was related to cognition, but walking speed was not. It seems that even moderate levels of physical activity can serve to limit declines in cognition in older adults.

Moderate movement is good, but toning your circulatory system with aerobic exercise may be the real key to brain fitness. In a 1995 study of 1,192 healthy 70- to 79-year-olds, cognitive neuroscientist Marilyn Albert of Johns Hopkins University and her colleagues measured cognition with a battery of tasks that took approximately 30 minutes to complete and included tests of language, verbal memory, nonverbal memory, conceptualization and visuospatial ability. They found that the best predictors of cognitive change over a two-year period included strenuous activity and peak pulmonary expiratory flow rate. In an investigation published in 2004 epidemiologist Jennifer Weuve of Harvard University and her colleagues also examined the relation between physical activity and cognitive change over a two-year period in 16,466 nurses older than 70. Participants logged how much time they spent per week in a variety of physical activities (running, jogging, walking, hiking, racket sports, swimming, bicycling, aerobic dance) over the past year and provided self-reports of walking pace in minutes per mile. Weuve’s group observed a significant relation between energy expended in physical activities and cognition, across a large set of cognitive measures.

The article also covers the benefits of real time strategy video games on improving mental health. That’s right, Starcraft can keep you smarter. I imagine any complex organizational task, such as a WoW raid or building a model train set or writing a novel, would have similar benefits.