Do you have enough mental muscle to get the grades you want or to score as high as you would like on the SAT or GRE? I’ve pointed out several times that peak mental performance depends more on technique than on sheer power, however, there is no doubt that having a beefy brain does make things easier.
Good news! Neurological research has demonstrated that the brain responds to mental exercise much like a muscle. The more you work it, the stronger it gets. I’m not just referring to IQ; the brain itself actually grows physically in response to training.
Vincenzo Malacarne, an 18th Century Italian scientist first discovered this when he trained birds to do a series of complex tricks. Later he dissected the birds’s brai
ns and found increased folding in the brains of the trained birds. The modern technological breakthroughs in brain scans have shown similar variations in human brains in response to learning.
This is great news. It means that, just as our bodies respond to exercise by becoming stronger and healthier, so do our noggins. So break out those books and start pumping info! You can get smarter!
Get adequate sleep at night and take a nap during the day when possible. The average person needs about 8.5 to 9 hours per night, but some need more and some need less. Stress in your life—physical, mental, or emotional—will often increase your need for sleep (though it may make sleep more difficult). If possible, try to go to sleep at the same time each night and allow your body to wake up on its own. The research on this is hard to fault. Numerous excellent studies from around the world show that getting enough sleep is absolutely critical to functioning at your peak, mentally and physically. Example: A U.S. Navy study of recruits in training published in 2008 noted, “In short, recruits who receive 8 hr of sleep per night scored on average 11% higher [on a standardized test] than their counterparts who receive only 6 hr of sleep, supporting our hypothesis that more sleep was associated with significantly better academic performance.”
