Food for Thought
Dopamine encourages a persistent, goal-centered state of mind. Anything that raises dopamine levels can boost your powers of concentration. One way to do this is with drugs such as amphetamines and the ADHD drug methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin. Caffeine also works. Modafinil, a drug licensed to treat narcolepsy, can keep a person awake and alert for 90 hours straight, with none of the jitteriness and bad concentration that amphetamines or coffee produce. Military research is finding that people can stay awake for 40 hours, sleep the normal 8 hours, and then pull a few more all-nighters with no ill effects.
The brain is best fuelled by a steady supply of glucose, and many studies have shown that skipping breakfast reduces people’s performance at school and at work. But kids breakfasting on fizzy drinks and sugary snacks perform at the level of an average 70-year-old in tests of memory and attention. Breakfast of toast and beans boost children’s scores on a variety of cognitive tests. Beans are a good source of fiber, and research has shown a link between a high-fiber diet and improved cognition. The yeast extract in Marmite is packed with B vitamins, whose brain-boosting powers have been demonstrated in many studies.
Eggs are rich in choline, which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. When healthy young adults are given the drug scopolamine, which blocks acetylcholine receptors in the brain, it significantly reduces their ability to remember word pairs. Low levels of acetylcholine are also associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers found that a diet high in antioxidants improved the cognitive skills of 39 ageing beagles.
Yogurt contains the amino acid tyrosine, needed for the production of the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenalin, among others. Tyrosine becomes depleted when we are under stress. Supplementing your intake can improve alertness and memory.
Highly processed goodies such as cakes, pastries and biscuits, contain trans-fatty acids. These not only pile on the pounds, but are implicated in a slew of serious mental disorders, from dyslexia and ADHD to autism. Rats and mice raised on the rodent equivalent of junk food struggle to find their way around mazes, and take longer to remember solutions to problems they had already solved.
Older mice from a strain genetically altered to develop Alzheimer’s had 70 per cent less of the amyloid plaques associated with the disease when fed on a high-DHA (Omega 3) diet.
Rats fed on strawberries and blueberries have shown improved coordination, concentration and short-term memory.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, researchers measured the brain activity of adults before and after a working-memory training program, which involved tasks such as memorizing the positions of a series of dots on a grid. After five weeks of training, their brain activity had increased in the regions associated with this type of memory. When the group studied children who had completed these types of mental workouts, they saw improvement in a range of cognitive abilities not related to the training, and a leap in IQ test scores of 8 per cent.
When researchers studied eight front runners in the annual World Memory Championships they did not find any evidence that these people have particularly high IQs or differently configured brains. But, while memorizing, these people did show activity in three brain regions that become active during movements and navigation tasks but are not normally active during simple memory tests. To remember the sequence of an entire pack of playing cards for example, the champions assign each card an identity, perhaps an object or person, and as they flick through the cards they can make up a story based on a sequence of interactions between these characters and objects at sites along a well-trodden route.
If you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk. Two or three late nights and early mornings in a row have the same effect. If you let someone who isn’t sleep-deprived have an extra hour or two of shut-eye, they perform much better than normal on tasks requiring sustained attention, such taking an exam.
Walking sedately for half an hour three times a week can improve abilities such as learning, concentration and abstract reasoning by 15 per cent. The effects are particularly noticeable in older people.
Schoolchildren who exercise three or four times a week get higher than average exam grades at age 10 or 11. The effect is strongest in boys.
Physical exercise promotes the growth of new brain cells. In mice, at least, the brain-building effects of exercise are strongest in the hippocampus, which is involved with learning and memory. This also happens to be the brain region that is damaged by elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
A study considered the mood-altering ability of different yoga poses. It concluded that the best way to get a mental lift is to bend over backwards.
Researchers asked volunteers to spend 15 minutes a day thinking about exercising their biceps. After 12 weeks, their arms were 13 per cent stronger.
Workplace studies have found that it takes up to 15 minutes to regain a deep state of concentration after a distraction such as a phone call.
Music can help as long as you listen to something familiar and soothing that serves primarily to drown out background noise. Psychologists also recommend that you avoid working near potential diversions, such as the fridge.