Memory Training to Improve Your Intellect
I just found this article posted by my good friend Tom Dotz at NLP Comprehensive. I guess this thing we call intelligence isn’t isn’t innate, but is something we can, and have to, develop. This might perturb a few individuals because this article will remove their primary excuse for not learning anything new. In other words, “This is just the way I am” won’t cut the mustard any more.
I’m sure that the availability of information over the internet has something to do with enhancing our learning abilities. But the choice to use what’s available to us, as always, rest solely with the individual.
Memory Training Study from The New York Times
Here is an excerpt from the New York Times article:
A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth.
Until now, it had been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience was innate and couldn’t be taught.
But in the new study, researchers describe a method for improving this skill, along with experiments to prove it works.
The key, researchers found, was carefully structured training in working memory — the kind that allows memorization of a telephone number just long enough to dial it. This type of memory is closely related to fluid intelligence, according to background information in the article, and appears to rely on the same brain circuitry. So the researchers reasoned that improving it might lead to improvements in fluid intelligence.
Here’s another piece of advice you should keep in mind. You can’t run a solid program on faulty hardware. So keep your hardware running in peak condition because your physical health has a big impact on how well you perform mentally.
For more on the NLP methodology, read the NLP Comprehensive blog here.
