All you need to do is feed the hunger. This particular dopamine receptor, the D1 type, is associated with neural growth and development, among other things. This increase in plasticity , allowing greater binding of this receptor, is a very good thing for maximizing cognitive functioning.

Take home point: Be an "Einstein". Always look to new activities to engage your mind—expand your cognitive horizons. Learn an instrument. Take an art class. Go to a museum. Read about a new area of science.

Be a knowledge junkie. There are absolutely oodles of terrible things written and promoted on how to "train your brain" to "get smarter". I'm going to shatter some of that stuff you've previously heard about brain training games. Here goes: They don't work. Individual brain training games don't make you smarter —they make you more proficient at the brain training games.

Now, they do serve a purpose, but it is short-lived. The key to getting something out of those types of cognitive activities sort of relates to the first principle of seeking novelty. Once you master one of those cognitive activities in the brain-training game, you need to move on to the next challenging activity.

Figure out how to play Sudoku? Now move along to the next type of challenging game. There is research that supports this logic. A few years ago, scientist Richard Haier wanted to see if you could increase your cognitive ability by intensely training on novel mental activities for a period of several weeks.

They used the video game Tetris as the novel activity, and used people who had never played the game before as subjects I know—can you believe they exist?!

What they found, was that after training for several weeks on the game Tetris, the subjects experienced an increase in cortical thickness, as well as an increase in cortical activity, as evidenced by the increase in how much glucose was used in that area of the brain.

Basically, the brain used more energy during those training times, and bulked up in thickness—which means more neural connections, or new learned expertise—after this intense training.

And they became experts at Tetris. Cool, right? However, they remained just as good at Tetris; their skill did not decrease. The brain scans showed less brain activity during the game-playing, instead of more, as in the previous days.

Why the drop? Their brains got more efficient. Once their brain figured out how to play Tetris, and got really good at it, it got lazy. Efficiency is not your friend when it comes to cognitive growth. In order to keep your brain making new connections and keeping them active, you need to keep moving on to another challenging activity as soon as you reach the point of mastery in the one you are engaging in.

You want to be in a constant state of slight discomfort, struggling to barely achieve whatever it is you are trying to do, as Einstein alluded to in his quote. This keeps your brain on its toes, so to speak. When I say thinking creatively will help you achieve neural growth, I am not talking about painting a picture, or doing something artsy, like we discussed in the first principle, Seeking Novelty.

When I speak of creative thinking, I am talking about creative cognition itself, and what that means as far as the process going on in your brain.

Contrary to popular belief, creative thinking does not equal "thinking with the right side of your brain". It involves recruitment from both halves of your brain, not just the right. In order to do this well, you need both right and left hemispheres working in conjunction with each other.

Several years ago, Dr Robert Sternberg , former Dean at Tufts University, opened the PACE Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise Center, in Boston. Sternberg has been on a quest to not only understand the fundamental concept of intelligence, but also to find ways in which any one person can maximize his or her intelligence through training, and especially, through teaching in schools.

As part of a research study, The Rainbow Project [pdf], he created not only innovative methods of creative teaching in the classroom, but generated assessment procedures that tested the students in ways that got them to think about the problems in creative and practical ways, as well as analytical, instead of just memorizing facts.

He wanted to find out if by teaching students to think creatively and practically about a problem, as well as for memory, he could get them to i Learn more about the topic, ii Have more fun learning, and iii Transfer that knowledge gained to other areas of academic performance.

He wanted to see if by varying the teaching and assessment methods, he could prevent "teaching to the test" and get the students to actually learn more in general.

He collected data on this, and boy, did he get great results. In a nutshell? On average, the students in the test group the ones taught using creative methods received higher final grades in the college course than the control group taught with traditional methods and assessments.

But—just to make things fair— he also gave the test group the very same analytical-type exam that the regular students got a multiple choice test , and they scored higher on that test as well. That means they were able to transfer the knowledge they gained using creative, multimodal teaching methods, and score higher on a completely different cognitive test of achievement on that same material.

Sound familiar? I mentioned earlier that efficiency is not your friend if you are trying to increase your intelligence.

Unfortunately, many things in life are centered on trying to make everything more efficient. This is so we can do more things, in a shorter amount of time, expending the least amount of physical and mental energy possible.

Take one object of modern convenience, GPS. GPS is an amazing invention. I am one of those people GPS was invented for. My sense of direction is terrible. I get lost all the time. So when GPS came along, I was thanking my lucky stars. But you know what? After using GPS for a short time, I found that my sense of direction was worse.

If I failed to have it with me, I was even more lost than before. So when I moved to Boston—the city that horror movies and nightmares about getting lost are modeled after—I stopped using GPS. I had a new job which involved traveling all over the burbs of Boston, and I got lost every single day for at least 4 weeks.

I got lost so much, I thought I was going to lose my job due to chronic lateness I even got written up for it. But—in time, I started learning my way around, due to the sheer amount of practice I was getting at navigation using only my brain and a map.

I began to actually get a sense of where things in Boston were, using logic and memory, not GPS. I can still remember how proud I was the day a friend was in town visiting, and I was able to effectively find his hotel downtown with only a name and a location description to go on—not even an address.

It was like I had graduated from navigational awareness school. Technology does a lot to make things in life easier, faster, more efficient, but sometimes our cognitive skills can suffer as a result of these shortcuts, and hurt us in the long run.

Not a big deal. Your overall health will probably decline as a result. Your brain needs exercise as well. If you stop using your problem-solving skills, your spatial skills, your logical skills, your cognitive skills—how do you expect your brain to stay in top shape—never mind improve?

Think about modern conveniences that are helpful, but when relied on too much, can hurt your skill in that domain. Translation software: amazing, but my multilingual skills have declined since I started using it more. Same goes for spell-check and autocorrect.

In fact, I think autocorrect was one of the worst things ever invented for the advancement of cognition. You know the computer will catch your mistakes, so you plug along, not even thinking about how to spell any more.

As a result of years of relying on autocorrect and spell-check, as a nation, are we worse spellers? I would love someone to do a study on this. There are times when using technology is warranted and necessary. Walking to work every so often or taking the stairs instead of the elevator a few times a week is recommended to stay in good physical shape.

Lay off the GPS once in a while, and do your spatial and problem-solving skills a favor. Keep it handy, but try navigating naked first. Your brain will thank you. And that brings us to the last element to maximize your cognitive potential: Networking. If not, start.

By networking with other people—either through social media such as Facebook or Twitter, or in face-to-face interactions—you are exposing yourself to the kinds of situations that are going to make objectives much easier to achieve.

By exposing yourself to new people, ideas, and environments, you are opening yourself up to new opportunities for cognitive growth. Being in the presence of other people who may be outside of your immediate field gives you opportunities to see problems from a new perspective, or offer insight in ways that you had never thought of before.

Learning is all about exposing yourself to new things and taking in that information in ways that are meaningful and unique—networking with other people is a great way to make that happen. Steven Johnson , author who wrote the book "Where Good Ideas Come From", discusses the importance of groups and networks for the advancement of ideas.

If you are looking for ways to seek out novel situations, ideas, environments, and perspectives, then networking is the answer. It would be pretty tough to implement this "Get Smarter" regiment without making networking a primary component.

Greatest thing about networking: Everyone involved benefits. Collective intelligence for the win! Remember back to the beginning of this article where I told the story about my clients with autism spectrum disorders?

Why were those children able to achieve at such a high level? It was not by chance or miracle—it was because we incorporated all of these learning principles into their therapy program. While most other therapy providers were stuck in the " Errorless Learning " paradigm and barely-modified " Lovaas Techniques " of Applied Behavior Analysis, we adopted and fully embraced a multimodal approach to teaching.

We made the kids struggle to learn, we used the most creative ways we could think of, and we challenged them beyond what they seemed capable of—we set the bar very high. They surpassed that bar time and time again, and made me truly believe that amazing things are possible if you have enough will and courage and perseverance to set yourself on that path and stick with it.

If those kids with disabilities can live this lifestyle of constantly maximizing their cognitive potential, then so can you. This is the kind of intelligence that is valuable, and this is the type of intelligence we should be striving for and encouraging.

The motivation for the former is driven by dopamine, and associated with curiosity—the latter by adrenaline, and typically associated with more dangerous activities. Garlick, D. Understanding the Nature of the General Factor of Intelligence: The Role of Individual Differences in Neural Plasticity as an Explanatory Mechanism.

Psychological Review , , no. Haier, R. The Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory P-FIT of Intelligence: Converging Neuroinaging Evidence.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Cerebral glucose metabolism and intelligence. Vernon, Biological approaches to the study of human intelligenc e pp. Norwood, N. Susanne M. Jaeggi, M. Improving Fluid intelligence With Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers claim that a healthy body fosters a healthy mind. This is why, as you age, engaging in physical exercise and healthy eating habits, as well as regularly participating in social interactions, will become increasingly important. Regardless of your age, focusing on a few particular skills can help strengthen and sustain a healthy brain to avoid a severe decline in cognitive functions.

Here are eight examples of cognitive skills you can prioritize. Sustained attention is the ability to stay focused on something for an extended time. Internal stimuli include things like thoughts or memories, and external stimuli involve the five senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing.

To help maintain your focus and concentration, you can train your mind with tasks that fix your attention on a single task, like playing Sudoku every day.

Selective attention is the ability to focus on one thing and disregard external stimuli competing for your time and attention. Similar to sustaining your attention, you must control your perception of internal and external stimuli to maintain focus on one thing. Divided attention is the ability to multitask, focusing on multiple things at once.

It also includes an element of stimulus control. When you divide your attention, you should be able to concentrate on specific things from each task, without forgetting information that pertains to any of the tasks. Playing games that give you different stimuli at the same time—like auditory and visual stimuli—can help you develop your divided attention skills.

Long-term memory implies the ability to remember past information. On the flip side, short-term memory describes the ability to temporarily store information for instant access.

It applies mainly to any present tasks or situations, including scenarios like addressing a person you just met by their name, remembering a task you want to complete, or memorizing a short grocery list. Engaging in crossword puzzles, reading, gaming, and exploring new hobbies can help enrich your short-term memory.

Auditory processing refers to the ways in which your brain analyzes, separates, and mixes sounds. If this brain function is lacking, you may need help conversing with others, understanding what people are saying, or even reading and watching movies.

Adults with auditory processing difficulties can benefit from deficit-specific auditory processing therapy and hearing assistive technology. Similar to auditory processing, visual processing refers to the ways in which your brain analyzes and separates visuals.

People who struggle with visual processing may have trouble reading, following GPS directions, or splitting their focus visually.

Processing speed generally refers to how quickly your brain can analyze and comprehend information, be it auditory, visual, internal, or external.

This cognitive skill typically declines with age and can affect the sustainability of other cognitive skills. To test your processing speed, you can take on the Mensa IQ Challenge, a timed intelligence assessment.

Cognitive skills are essential for maintaining and expanding your brain capacity, but beyond that, these skills can assist in social, personal, and professional settings. By first developing your memory retention, attention span, and brain processing in general, you can then work on skills like logic and reasoning, self-awareness, and emotional development.

While it may go unnoticed, cognitive skills are used in nearly every day-to-day scenario, highlighting the significance of refining processing skills, memory retention efforts, and attention span expansion to build a solid logical foundation. Your ability to practice self-control, make decisions, and socialize with others is also enhanced through cognitive functions.

Making a daily commitment to strengthen or preserve your cognitive skills will have long-lasting benefits.

A brain training activity doesn't always have to be exercise-related. Much research has found that creative outlets like painting and other art forms, learning an instrument, doing expressive or autobiographical writing, and learning a language also can improve cognitive function.

A study in Gerontologist reviewed 31 studies that focused on how these specific endeavors affected older adults' mental skills and found that all of them improved several aspects of memory like recalling instructions and processing speed.

Pick one new activity. Devote your time and attention to only one additional activity, so you won't be tempted by other interests. Sign up for a class. Classes are a good way to learn the basics of any new activity, especially one that requires specific skills, like painting or music.

Schedule practice time. Don't focus on the amount of time you practice at first, but rather aim for consistency. Devote what time you can, but be firm with your commitment. Schedule it and do it. No matter which new activity you choose, make sure it follows three guidelines in order to maximize brain training, according to Dr.

You have to always challenge your brain in order for it to grow. This is why choosing a new activity is so beneficial. It engages your brain to learn something new and offers the chance to improve. Not up for a new endeavor? Raise the bar for an existing activity.

For instance, if you are a casual golfer, commit to increasing your ability and aim to lower your handicap or shoot a specific score. A complex activity not only strikes a match of excitement, but forces your brain to work on specific thought processes like problem solving and creative thinking.

A study in Psychological Science found that older adults ages 60 to 90 who did new and complex activities, such as digital photography or quilting, for an average of 16 hours per week for three months scored better on working and long-term memory tests than those who did more familiar activities like reading and doing crossword puzzles.

Practice makes permanent, and that goes for brain function, too. Your activity should require some level of constant practice, but the goal is not to strive for vast improvements.

As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date of last review or update on all articles. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.

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Sign up now and get a FREE copy of the Best Diets for Cognitive Fitness. Stay on top of latest health news from Harvard Medical School. Recent Blog Articles. Be a knowledge junkie. There are absolutely oodles of terrible things written and promoted on how to "train your brain" to "get smarter".

I'm going to shatter some of that stuff you've previously heard about brain training games. Here goes: They don't work. Individual brain training games don't make you smarter —they make you more proficient at the brain training games.

Now, they do serve a purpose, but it is short-lived. The key to getting something out of those types of cognitive activities sort of relates to the first principle of seeking novelty.

Once you master one of those cognitive activities in the brain-training game, you need to move on to the next challenging activity. Figure out how to play Sudoku? Now move along to the next type of challenging game. There is research that supports this logic.

A few years ago, scientist Richard Haier wanted to see if you could increase your cognitive ability by intensely training on novel mental activities for a period of several weeks. They used the video game Tetris as the novel activity, and used people who had never played the game before as subjects I know—can you believe they exist?!

What they found, was that after training for several weeks on the game Tetris, the subjects experienced an increase in cortical thickness, as well as an increase in cortical activity, as evidenced by the increase in how much glucose was used in that area of the brain.

Basically, the brain used more energy during those training times, and bulked up in thickness—which means more neural connections, or new learned expertise—after this intense training. And they became experts at Tetris. Cool, right? However, they remained just as good at Tetris; their skill did not decrease.

The brain scans showed less brain activity during the game-playing, instead of more, as in the previous days. Why the drop? Their brains got more efficient. Once their brain figured out how to play Tetris, and got really good at it, it got lazy.

Efficiency is not your friend when it comes to cognitive growth. In order to keep your brain making new connections and keeping them active, you need to keep moving on to another challenging activity as soon as you reach the point of mastery in the one you are engaging in.

You want to be in a constant state of slight discomfort, struggling to barely achieve whatever it is you are trying to do, as Einstein alluded to in his quote. This keeps your brain on its toes, so to speak. When I say thinking creatively will help you achieve neural growth, I am not talking about painting a picture, or doing something artsy, like we discussed in the first principle, Seeking Novelty.

When I speak of creative thinking, I am talking about creative cognition itself, and what that means as far as the process going on in your brain.

Contrary to popular belief, creative thinking does not equal "thinking with the right side of your brain". It involves recruitment from both halves of your brain, not just the right.

In order to do this well, you need both right and left hemispheres working in conjunction with each other.

Several years ago, Dr Robert Sternberg , former Dean at Tufts University, opened the PACE Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise Center, in Boston. Sternberg has been on a quest to not only understand the fundamental concept of intelligence, but also to find ways in which any one person can maximize his or her intelligence through training, and especially, through teaching in schools.

As part of a research study, The Rainbow Project [pdf], he created not only innovative methods of creative teaching in the classroom, but generated assessment procedures that tested the students in ways that got them to think about the problems in creative and practical ways, as well as analytical, instead of just memorizing facts.

He wanted to find out if by teaching students to think creatively and practically about a problem, as well as for memory, he could get them to i Learn more about the topic, ii Have more fun learning, and iii Transfer that knowledge gained to other areas of academic performance.

He wanted to see if by varying the teaching and assessment methods, he could prevent "teaching to the test" and get the students to actually learn more in general.

He collected data on this, and boy, did he get great results. In a nutshell? On average, the students in the test group the ones taught using creative methods received higher final grades in the college course than the control group taught with traditional methods and assessments.

But—just to make things fair— he also gave the test group the very same analytical-type exam that the regular students got a multiple choice test , and they scored higher on that test as well. That means they were able to transfer the knowledge they gained using creative, multimodal teaching methods, and score higher on a completely different cognitive test of achievement on that same material.

Sound familiar? I mentioned earlier that efficiency is not your friend if you are trying to increase your intelligence. Unfortunately, many things in life are centered on trying to make everything more efficient.

This is so we can do more things, in a shorter amount of time, expending the least amount of physical and mental energy possible.

Take one object of modern convenience, GPS. GPS is an amazing invention. I am one of those people GPS was invented for. My sense of direction is terrible. I get lost all the time. So when GPS came along, I was thanking my lucky stars. But you know what?

After using GPS for a short time, I found that my sense of direction was worse. If I failed to have it with me, I was even more lost than before. So when I moved to Boston—the city that horror movies and nightmares about getting lost are modeled after—I stopped using GPS.

I had a new job which involved traveling all over the burbs of Boston, and I got lost every single day for at least 4 weeks. I got lost so much, I thought I was going to lose my job due to chronic lateness I even got written up for it.

But—in time, I started learning my way around, due to the sheer amount of practice I was getting at navigation using only my brain and a map. I began to actually get a sense of where things in Boston were, using logic and memory, not GPS. I can still remember how proud I was the day a friend was in town visiting, and I was able to effectively find his hotel downtown with only a name and a location description to go on—not even an address.

It was like I had graduated from navigational awareness school. Technology does a lot to make things in life easier, faster, more efficient, but sometimes our cognitive skills can suffer as a result of these shortcuts, and hurt us in the long run.

Not a big deal. Your overall health will probably decline as a result. Your brain needs exercise as well.

If you stop using your problem-solving skills, your spatial skills, your logical skills, your cognitive skills—how do you expect your brain to stay in top shape—never mind improve?

Think about modern conveniences that are helpful, but when relied on too much, can hurt your skill in that domain. Translation software: amazing, but my multilingual skills have declined since I started using it more. Same goes for spell-check and autocorrect. In fact, I think autocorrect was one of the worst things ever invented for the advancement of cognition.

You know the computer will catch your mistakes, so you plug along, not even thinking about how to spell any more. As a result of years of relying on autocorrect and spell-check, as a nation, are we worse spellers?

I would love someone to do a study on this. There are times when using technology is warranted and necessary. Walking to work every so often or taking the stairs instead of the elevator a few times a week is recommended to stay in good physical shape.

Lay off the GPS once in a while, and do your spatial and problem-solving skills a favor. Keep it handy, but try navigating naked first. Your brain will thank you. And that brings us to the last element to maximize your cognitive potential: Networking.

If not, start. By networking with other people—either through social media such as Facebook or Twitter, or in face-to-face interactions—you are exposing yourself to the kinds of situations that are going to make objectives much easier to achieve.

By exposing yourself to new people, ideas, and environments, you are opening yourself up to new opportunities for cognitive growth.

Being in the presence of other people who may be outside of your immediate field gives you opportunities to see problems from a new perspective, or offer insight in ways that you had never thought of before.

Learning is all about exposing yourself to new things and taking in that information in ways that are meaningful and unique—networking with other people is a great way to make that happen. Steven Johnson , author who wrote the book "Where Good Ideas Come From", discusses the importance of groups and networks for the advancement of ideas.

If you are looking for ways to seek out novel situations, ideas, environments, and perspectives, then networking is the answer. It would be pretty tough to implement this "Get Smarter" regiment without making networking a primary component.

Greatest thing about networking: Everyone involved benefits. Collective intelligence for the win! Remember back to the beginning of this article where I told the story about my clients with autism spectrum disorders? Why were those children able to achieve at such a high level?

It was not by chance or miracle—it was because we incorporated all of these learning principles into their therapy program. While most other therapy providers were stuck in the " Errorless Learning " paradigm and barely-modified " Lovaas Techniques " of Applied Behavior Analysis, we adopted and fully embraced a multimodal approach to teaching.

We made the kids struggle to learn, we used the most creative ways we could think of, and we challenged them beyond what they seemed capable of—we set the bar very high. They surpassed that bar time and time again, and made me truly believe that amazing things are possible if you have enough will and courage and perseverance to set yourself on that path and stick with it.

If those kids with disabilities can live this lifestyle of constantly maximizing their cognitive potential, then so can you. This is the kind of intelligence that is valuable, and this is the type of intelligence we should be striving for and encouraging.

The motivation for the former is driven by dopamine, and associated with curiosity—the latter by adrenaline, and typically associated with more dangerous activities. Garlick, D.

Understanding the Nature of the General Factor of Intelligence: The Role of Individual Differences in Neural Plasticity as an Explanatory Mechanism. Psychological Review , , no. Haier, R. The Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory P-FIT of Intelligence: Converging Neuroinaging Evidence.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Cerebral glucose metabolism and intelligence. Vernon, Biological approaches to the study of human intelligenc e pp.

Norwood, N. Susanne M. Jaeggi, M. Improving Fluid intelligence With Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi: Ramey, C. Early Intervention and Early Experience.

American Psychologist , Sternberg, R. Increasing Fluid Intelligence is Possible After All. PNAS , , no. Implicit Theories of Intelligence, Creativity, and Wisdom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 49 ,