It seems that the generally accepted belief, and that to which I subscribe, is that intelligence is immutable. There exists, at this point, no exercise or training program that improve your IQ.

A paper, however, by Susanne M. Jaeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, and Walter J. Perrig, titled “Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory” suggests that this might not be the case.

In their research, they were able to demonstrate that those who trained with a simple dual n-back game succeeded in substantially improving their gF score on intelligence tests.

If you’d like to try, the game can be found here.

If you’d rather downoad a copy of the game, an offline version is available here.

General Science Intelligence

This image was produced by combining infrared images taken during 144 orbits of the Hubble Space Telescope with images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Hubble’s contribution to the panoramic image, which was released yesterday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, covers an area near the center of the Milky Way roughly 300 by 115 light years in size and is ten times sharper than the sections previously captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers use infrared light to capture images of this section of the galaxy as it is largely unaffected by dust in the region, whereas visible wavelengths are, for the most part, scattered and absorbed.

The sharper image reveals approximately 600,000 stars. The majority of the massive stars near the center of the Milky Way are found near its black hole or in either the Quintuplet or Arches star clusters, so it came as a surprise to find a new population of roughly 200 massive stars that appear to be in isolation.

The black hole, which appears in the image as a bright spiral within a torus of dust and gas, may be the reason for the rogue stars. Its approximate weight of 4 million Suns would produce such a massive gravitational force that it may have scattered the stars as it tore apart clusters that once occupied the surrounding region. Researchers are, however, unsure if the black hole is to blame or if the stars were simply born outside of the typical clusters.

Image credits: Hubble image: NASA/ESA/Q D Wang/UMass Amherst; Spitzer image: NASA/JPL/S Stolovy/Spitzer Science Center/Caltech

General Science Astronomy, Hubble

Everyone loves top ten lists and Aaron Rowe just published a great one on WIRED Science yesterday.

You can find the article here.

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Interested in owning your own space shuttle? NASA is offering their slightly used shuttles starting at the low low price of $42 million dollars, or 42,000 easy payments $999.99!

NASA has put the call out to schools, museums, and various other “appropriate organizations” that might be interested. The $42 million dollar price tag includes the estimated $6 million cost of preparing the shuttle and mounting it to the back of a modified jumbo jet for delivery to your local airport. The price, NASA warns, will be largely affected by the distance between the shuttle’s final delivery location and the airport.

Now, I hate to rain on your parade but, before you start trying to figure out how much time a space shuttle could shave off of your daily commute, you should know that NASA will only deliver the shuttles to buyers who will keep them in an indoor climate controlled display. And, just so that you don’t get any ideas, the shuttles will be delivered without any main engines.

Based on Bush’s plan to have astronauts return to the moon by 2020, NASA will retire Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour by September 30, 2010. Obama has, however, hinted at the possibility of keeping the shuttles in use beyond 2010. If that’s the case, I’m sure that there will be a few very disappointed shuttle ownership hopefuls. Although, I’m sure that disappointment will quickly turn to a sense of relief as I can’t imagine anything triggering buyer’s remorse more aggresively than a $24 million space shuttle that does nothing but occupy space (just not quite in the way that you would have hoped).

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As a healthy adult, would you take prescription medication, originally intended for other purposes, in order to enhance your cognitive ability? If so, you wouldn’t be alone: 7 percent of university students on US campuses have admitted to doing so, along with 20 percent of scientists.

In choosing to join the ranks of the enhanced student and scientist, you would be breaking the law. In the US, the use of these drugs without a prescription is a crime and is punishable by prison.

But is this right? People will be quick to draw a comparison to the use of performance enhancing drugs in athletics, the media coverage of which has rendered “enhancement” an ugly word. The difference lies in the fact that, as a competitive athlete, achieving an enhancement in your performance through the use of banned substances is a violation of the rules. These rules are enforced in order to level the playing.

Rules from an ethical or moral perspective have never been established in the academic or professional arenas. And why should they have been? In these fields, is a level playing field really something towards which we should strive? With scientists working towards outcomes that will, among many other things, enrich lives and cure disease, would we not want them to have every possible advantage? To ban the use of these drugs is to potentially deny ourselves innovations and accomplishments that, without cognitive enhancement, might have never been achieved or, at the very least, not realized until much later.

Human intelligence has severe limitations. Our cognitive capabilities are far exceeded by our circumstances, a fact made painfully evident by our limited understanding of the world in which we live and the widespread obstinate acceptance of irrational and childish beliefs. We need to adapt a way of thinking that will not result in restrictions being imposed on those who are willing to dedicate themselves to finding solutions.

The brain-boost shopping list

Intended as treatments for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), both Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts) affect the catecholamine system thus increasing executive functions. This can result in an improved ability to focus and to manipulate information in the working memory. Some memory enhancement can also be achieved.

Provigil (modafinil) is prescribed to treat fatigue caused by various sleep disorders. It can help you to stay awake for days without being burdened by the need for sleep. Some tests also show that, when taken by rested adults, certain aspects of executive function are enhanced.

Aricept (donepezil), developed to treat Alzheimer’s disease, raises acetylcholine levels in the brain, resulting in improved memory.

Further reading

Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy
It should be noted that both Barbara Sahakian and Ronald C. Kessler, two of the authors behind the article to which I’ve linked, work as consultants for several pharmaceutical companies. Barbara Sahakian holds shares in CeNes and Ronald C. Kessler has received grants from several pharmaceutical companies. Bias is everywhere; take from it what you will and form your own opinion.

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