Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower

A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth.

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.

?Intelligence has always been considered principally an immutable inherited trait,? said Susanne M. Jaeggi, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the paper. ?Our results show you can increase your intelligence with appropriate training.?

Read the full story in the New York Times

Tagged as: BRAIN SCIENCE, memory