Smart drugs - Does getting old have to mean worsening memory, slower reactions and fuzzy thinking?
A few drugs that might do the job, known as "cognitive enhancement", are already on the market, and a few dozen others are on the way. So why aren't we all on cognitive enhancers already? "We need to be careful what we wish for," says Daniele Piomelli at the University of California at Irvine. Tinkering with memory may have unwanted effects, he warns. "Ultimately we may end up remembering things we don't want to."
Food for thought - You are what you eat, and that includes your brain. So what is the ultimate mastermind diet?
First, go to the top of the class by eating breakfast. Beans on toast is a far better combination, as Barbara Stewart from the University of Ulster, UK, discovered. If you can't stomach beans before midday, wholemeal toast with Marmite makes a great alternative. A smart choice for lunch is omelette and salad. Round off lunch with a yogurt dessert, and you should be alert and ready to face the stresses of the afternoon. Don't forget to snaffle a snack mid-afternoon, to maintain your glucose levels. Just make sure you avoid junk food. Finally, you could do worse than finish off your evening meal with strawberries and blueberries.
The Mozart effect - Music may tune up your thinking, but you can't just crank up the volume and expect to become a genius
This sounds like the most harmonious way to tune up your mental faculties. But before you grab the CDs, hear this note of caution. Not everyone who has looked for the Mozart effect has found it. What's more, even its proponents tend to think that music boosts brain power simply because it makes listeners feel better - relaxed and stimulated at the same time - and that a comparable stimulus might do just as well. In fact, one study found that listening to a story gave a similar performance boost.
There is, however, one way in which music really does make you smarter, though unfortunately it requires a bit more effort than just selecting something mellow on your iPod. Music lessons!
Bionic brains - If training and tricks seem too much like hard work, some technological short cuts can boost brain function
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Gainful employment - Put your mind to work in the right way and it could repay you with an impressive bonus
A team led by Torkel Klingberg at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has found signs that the neural systems that underlie working memory may grow in response to training.
Memory marvels - Mind like a sieve? Don't worry. The difference between mere mortals and memory champs is more method than mental capacity.
Learn a trick from the "mnemonists" who routinely memorise strings of thousands of digits, entire epic poems, or hundreds of unrelated words.
Sleep on it - Never underestimate the power of a good night's rest
Body and mind - Physical exercise can boost brain as well as brawn
Balding suggests that aerobic exercise may boost mental powers by getting extra oxygen to your energy-guzzling brain.
There's another reason why your brain loves physical exercise: it promotes the growth of new brain cells. Until recently, received wisdom had it that we are born with a full complement of neurons and produce no new ones during our lifetime. Fred Gage from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, busted that myth in 2000 when he showed that even adults can grow new brain cells. He also found that exercise is one of the best ways to achieve this.
Just as physical exercise can boost the brain, mental exercise can boost the body.
Nuns on a run - If you don't want senility to interfere with your old age, perhaps you should seek some sisterly guidance
The sisters' miraculous longevity - the group boasts seven centenarians and many others well on their way - is surely in no small part attributable to their impeccable lifestyle. They do not drink or smoke, they live quietly and communally, they are spiritual and calm and they eat healthily and in moderation. Nevertheless, small differences between individual nuns could reveal the key to a healthy mind in later life.
Obviously, you don't have to become a nun to stay mentally agile. We can all aspire to these kinds of improvements. As one of the sisters put it, "Think no evil, do no evil, hear no evil, and you will never write a best-selling novel."
Attention seeking - You can be smart, well-read, creative and knowledgeable, but none of it is any use if your mind isn't on the job
Pay attention to everything in you are involved with. If you find your mind wandering, tell your brain - "Stop! Be here now!"
Positive feedback - Thought control is easier than you might imagine
IT SOUNDS a bit New Age, but there is a mysterious method of thought control you can learn that seems to boost brain power. No one quite knows how it works, and it is hard to describe exactly how to do it: it's not relaxation or concentration as such, more a state of mind. It's called neurofeedback. And it is slowly gaining scientific credibility.
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