Chapter Three
I Get Me Smarter Soon
OK, let’s get back to me now. It’s time to turbocharge my brain. During the next four months, I plan to cram my days and nights with as many brain-boosting pursuits as I can stand. If there’s a shred of scientific evidence that a certain intervention might help, then it goes on my list. My list is very long and the bigwig in my head is very lazy (it takes after me). Not everything will make the cut. You don’t really expect me to eat legumes and unrefined cereal, do you? Both are staples of the Mediterranean diet, which has been universally and tediously endorsed for its wholesome effects on brain function. And don’t ask me to give up Diet Coke.
Liquid Capital
You thought the merlot tonight was expensive? Ho, ho, ho. Try ordering a bottle of Azature Black Diamond nail polish. At $250,000 for a half ounce, it would set you back $64 million for a gallon.
DIRECTIONS:
Order the entries below from most expensive to least, assuming you’re buying a gallon of each and that you’re not shopping for deals at Costco. This quiz is as much about critical thinking and unit conversions as it is about recalling your last trip to the grocery store, apothecary, or sperm bank.
__ Diet Coke
__ V8
__ Vodka
__ Scorpion venom
__ Scorpion antivenom
__ Mayonnaise
__ Paint (sienna)
__ Rockstar Energy Drink
__ Human blood
__ Bear blood
__ Nail polish
__ Cough syrup (medicinal)
__ Cough syrup (recreational)
__ Black ink for computer printers
__ Ketchup
__ Skim milk
__ Molten gold
__ Salad dressing (ranch)
__ Prison wine, aka pruno, aka white lightning
__ Holy water
__ FIJI bottled water
__ Wite-Out
__ Horse semen
__ Human semen (male)
__ Chloroform
__ Sodium thiopental, aka truth serum
ANSWERS:
SCORING:
Use the same daffy method to score this quiz as for “Will Reading This Book Kill You?” (here). Compare your ranking with the correct lineup. If you were correct at least eight times, off by one at least nine times, or off by two at least ten times, you are ready to wean yourself from the bottle and introduce solids to your diet.
Should you ease off the drinking in any case? Contrary to popular opinion, alcohol does not kill brain cells. What’s more, drinking boring, I mean moderate, amounts of liquor protects you to some degree against age-related cognitive decline. According to a study done at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (where, yes, wine does stand in for the blood of Christ), 29 percent of those who never drank suffered from mental impairment versus only 19 percent in the merrier group. Alcohol does, however, damage dendrites—the branch-like neural ends that conduct electrochemical impulses from adjacent cells and carry them toward the cell body. If there is a problem with your dendrites, your cells will therefore have difficulty receiving messages from one another. It’s like the Internet going down. But cheers: If you can just cut down on that copious amount of booze you’ve been consuming, the damage will undo itself.
Another thing you don’t have to worry about: No matter what you may have heard during Prohibition, drinking will not lead to spontaneous combustion.
(I hate to end this on a down note, but some dipsomaniacs suffer from a neurological disorder called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which can cause confusion, memory problems, and other things you don’t want, such as death. It does not come from alcohol per se but rather from a deficiency of thiamine [vitamin B1], whose absorption by the body is blocked by alcohol.)
Like boozing it up, napping will also be absent from my get-smart-quick plan—even if scientists try to lull me asleep by alleging that during a siesta, the brain cleans itself up, consolidating short-term memories and trundling them over to long-term storage areas. I will keep my eyes open even if I am presented with evidence claiming that dozing off during the day would make me be more alert, remember more, be more focused, and have a greater sex drive. I will say that I don’t care—maybe because, as studies have shown, after my existing on five to six hours of sleep a night for the past few decades, my decision-making skills are sorrily compromised. If these scientists are still awake, I will also let them know that a psychologist at the London School of Economics named Satoshi Kanazawa reported that people who go to bed later and get up later have higher IQs. Here are his findings regarding the bedtimes and wake-up times of the smart and the dumb as reported in STUDY Magazine, and only the unstudious could refute a publication by that name.
Very Dull (IQ < 75)
Weekday: 11:41 p.m.–7:20 a.m.
Weekend: 12:35 a.m.–10:09 a.m.
Very Bright (IQ > 125)
Weekday: 12:29 a.m.–7:52 a.m.
Weekend: 1:44 a.m.–11:07 a.m.
By the way, it is also true that acording to various studies, higher-IQ people are more likely to be left-handed, tall, thin, blue-eyed, oldest children who are atheist, liberal, prone to lying, drinking, and using drugs—and in ownership of a cat.
For the most part, the mind-building activities recommended by the cognoscenti meet all or some of the following criteria: They are intellectually challenging, physically demanding, socially engaging, or stress-reducing (according to these guidelines, a party-going, high-jumping Buddhist monk who likes to assemble IKEA bookshelves while focusing on his breathing should be verrrrry brilliant). Among the most popular suggestions for staying sharp are playing online brain fitness games, learning a new language or musical instrument, working out aerobically, joining a book club, and practicing meditation. Not all the advice is so boring and predictable.
Below is a list of self-improvement endeavors that purportedly vitalize your mind. I have culled them from various books and websites. Some I have invented. Can you figure out which ones are bona fide? (Answer true for the true ones and bullshit for the others.)
How to Be Brainier
1. Write backward with your weaker hand.
2. Rearrange your furniture.
3. Make your bed using the flat sheet for the fitted sheet and vice versa.
4. Don’t step on the sidewalk cracks for an entire day.
5. Create “top one hundred” lists.
6. Join a cult and then give the leader thirteen reasons why you’re quitting.
7. Take a slow day in which you do everything at half speed.
8. Eat dinner under the table.
9. Parallel park while blindfolded.
10. Take a baked potato out of the oven with your bare hand.
11. Make a pineapple upside-down cake right side up.
12. Keep a journal.
13. Avoid reading the newspaper or news websites for a week.
14. Donate one-third of your clothes to charity.
15. Eat less.
16. Drink water.
17. Take ginkgo biloba.
18. Don’t take ginkgo biloba.
19. “Be.”
20. Sit up straight.
21. Wash behind your ears.
22. Take a nap.
23. Play Tetris.
24. Go to a black-tie affair wearing something red.
25. Consume antioxidants daily.
26. Get rid of toxins by gargling with prune juice.
27. File for a divorce.
28. Question everything. Ask why incessantly.
ANSWERS:
1. (T) Write backward with your weaker hand.
2. (T) Rearrange your furniture.
3. (B) Make your bed using the flat sheet for the fitted sheet and vice versa.
4. (B) Don’t step on the sidewalk cracks for an entire day.
5. (T) Create “top one hundred” lists.
6. (B) Join a cult and then give the leader thirteen reasons why you’re quitting.
7. (T) Take a slow day in which you do everything at half speed.
8. (B) Eat dinner under the table.
9. (B) Parallel park while blindfolded.
10. (B) Take a baked potato out of the oven with your bare hand.
11. (B) Make a pineapple upside-down cake right side up.
12. (T) Keep a journal.
13. (B) Avoid reading the newspaper or news websites for a week.
14. (B) Donate one-third of your clothes to charity.
16. (T) Drink water.
17. (T) Take ginkgo biloba.
18. (T) Don’t take ginkgo biloba.
19. (T) “Be.”
20. (T) Sit up straight.
21. (B) Wash behind your ears.
22. (T) Take a nap.
23. (T) Play Tetris.
24. (B) Go to a black-tie affair wearing something red.
25. (T) Consume antioxidants daily.
26. (B) Get rid of toxins by gargling with prune juice.
27. (B) File for a divorce.
28. (T) Question everything. Ask why incessantly.
I’m no mind reader (yet), but I bet you are thinking, it took her many years to become as stupid as she is, how can she expect to become much less stupid in four months? Isn’t cognitive change gradual, you reason, even lifelong? I guess we’ll see about that. In any case, I have no patience with patience.
In due course, we’ll take stock of my mental faculties. Unfortunately, my life is not one that is rich in obvious and observable mental benchmarks. If I were a poker champ, I could tally my winnings after my cognitive makeover and compare them to my average intake; if I were a chess player I could chart my ratings; an air traffic controller, I could tell you whether I caused fewer accidents and if, over time, my near misses became more or less bloodcurdling. Instead I’m a writer who muddles measurelessly through life (grammur and speling miztakes some perhaps you can see changeing?). How, then, to evaluate my progress? I had planned to keep a forgetting journal, but—spoiler alert—this is as far as I got before I forgot to keep up the entries:
Put laundry in machine and never pressed start button.
There’s someone I have to e-mail. It’s urgent. Who is it?
Lady at makeup counter said, “I have mixed feelings about purple” and “Green is not a priority color for me.” Made mental note to remember for possible future use. Remembered a day later!
Ditto when salesgirl at Club Monaco said, “I wasn’t a turtleneck person until I tried on the Julie turtleneck. Now I’m totally a turtleneck person.” Am I getting smarter? On other hand: How do I know if I got quotes right?
Forgot to buy a new memory card.
Remembered the name Michael Keaton but forgot why I was trying to remember him.
Unchartered territory? Uncharted?
How many times do I have to look up the word eidetic?
Told someone I had to get off phone because I had to look for my phone.
After I have finished bettering myself, I intend to ask my friends whether they’ve detected any changes in me. Of course, it’s arguable whether anyone really pays attention to the lapses of others. (Has anyone shared in your joy when, after days of rifling through every hiding place in your cranium, you finally came up with the name of the actor who died shortly after he appeared in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest? William Redfield, as if you care.) There are, thankfully, more reliable, or at least more objective, or at least other, assessment tests. Before I begin my get-less-stupid program and then again soon after I finish, I will have my head scanned in an MRI machine and also take a battery of IQ tests.
Thus: What’s crucial right now, during this interval before my evaluation, is that I stay as pristinely and impeccably stupid as ever. No feeding from the tree of knowledge, not even any nibbling of trivia from the Dining and Wine section of the New York Times. My goal is to discourage the formation of new neural pathways and weaken the ones I have (good-bye trying One Hundred Years of Solitude again). Since our brains change all the time, even when we sneeze, do beadwork, or watch a cricket match, this is not a simple enterprise. Watching TV helps—and not the good kind that’s reviewed.
Studies have shown that all sorts of external factors affect our short-term memory, or is it just that there are a lot of studies?
DIRECTIONS:
For each of the following, choose (a) if the item tends to make us forget, (b) if it tends to make us remember, or (c) if the item has not yet become the focus of grant funding.
1. The sight of other people’s faces (a) (b) (c)
2. Deep voices (a) (b) (c)
3. Drinking water out of paper cups (a) (b) (c)
4. Using your hands when you talk (a) (b) (c)
5. Walking through doorways (a) (b) (c)
6. Cooking risotto (a) (b) (c)
7. Playing with your hair (a) (b) (c)
8. Wacky fonts (a) (b) (c)
ANSWERS:
1. (a) Faces are distracting. If you want to recollect something, look at the floor or dreamily into the far-off distance—or at least tell everyone to go away.
2. (b) Scientists at the University of Aberdeen found that the utterances of men with low-pitched voices were more memorable to women than anything squeaky fellows had to say.
3. (c)
4. (b) Susan Goldin-Meadow at the University of Chicago says (possibly with her hands) that making gestures disencumbers our working memories and allows us to retain facts longer. She demonstrated this in an experiment in which subjects had to explain the solution to a math problem while remembering a list of items. Those who wave their hands all over the place while explaining were able to recall 20 percent more.
5. (a) Passing through this threshold (aka event boundary) gives notice to the brain that it should dump the inessential information it learned in the previous room in order to clear mental space for new inessential information. Anything deemed important, such as the fact that the room is on fire, is consolidated and moved into long-term memory. As the University of Notre Dame researcher who discovered this phenomenon (Gabriel Radvansky) told a journalist (not me), “Doorways are bad. Avoid them at all costs.”
6. (c)
7. (c)
8. (b) Strange fonts, particularly ones that are hard to decipher, make us look more closely at the text and pay more attention to the material. Got it?