Rewiring needed

New skills don't come easy when first attempted but, with a bit of dedication, the early signs of improvements soon become apparent as we start to get into the swing of things. Eventually, what once felt completely alien becomes as easy as a walk in the park.

Why? Because your brain has invested sufficient resources in rewiring the pathways involved in executing that task. The key is to not lose faith when the early improvements start to taper off. Instead, you must keep pressing on. By doing so – and continuing to challenge your brain – it will continue to invest resources in improving communication between brain areas involved in whatever skill you are practising. This, for most of us, is easier said than done. As kids we were constantly confronted with having to try new things on a daily basis and so struggling with new challenges was a normal everyday experience. As adults, however, we are drawn by a natural instinct to seek comfort in behaviours that we know we are good at. As a result, we become less inclined to try new things that have the potential to make us feel like a failure. However, those who do trust their brains to adapt to any regularly encountered challenge and embrace the opportunity to try new things will inevitably continue to expand and develop their abilities.

As a child you were told by certain people who were most influential to you – parents, older relatives, teachers and peers – that you were good at some things and not so good at others. The themes that you regularly heard not only shaped your beliefs but also profoundly influenced the environments and tasks you chose to dedicate time to – the ones you became best adapted to – and the ones you tried to avoid.

If a teacher led you to believe that you were hopeless at maths then a self-fulfilling prophecy would be born. You would never again greet the prospect of having to do maths with any great relish. This shortfall in enthusiasm would result in you not trying; and a lack of effort would mean that your brain wouldn't be stretched and, as a result, unable to adapt. The inevitable poor results that followed would merely confirm your falsely held belief that you “cannot do” maths.

The exact opposite also applies, only this time in a self-propelling, upwards direction. If you really believed – because a figure of authority convinced you of your “inherent” talent – that you were good at maths, then of course you would be inspired to do more maths. The consequence of your newfound dedication being that your brain would be continuously challenged and, as a direct result, be forced to adapt to do it faster, better and more efficiently each time. With your brain now having heavily invested in some much needed rewiring, your maths skills would improve and, in turn, you'd be motivated to do more maths.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, huh? Well, that may or may not be true. But it's totally irrelevant to us humans. We most definitely can learn new tricks throughout life.

It is true that the brain is particularly adaptable during childhood and adolescence. Kids seem to absorb information like sponges, which can make us adults feel as though we have permanently lost our natural capacity to learn new tricks. This is completely untrue. We just don't acquire new skills as rapidly as younger brains do, but this is largely a function of how much time we spend each day trying to pick up new skills. Children do it all the time, whereas we grownups only do so much, and far less often. Herein lies a crucial difference that explains why, through practice, kids pick things up more quickly than adults – your brain learns to learn during childhood and gets better and better the more learning it does. Unfortunately, most adult brains have fallen out of the habit of learning because of the lack of demand placed on them to attempt new challenges every single day.

Challenge your brain regularly to learn and it will re-learn the mode that makes learning happen rapidly. That's all there is to it.

The human brain retains its ability to learn new skills well into the latter stages of adulthood. Think about the number of people who, late on in life, discovered the art of text messaging and, in a relatively short period of time, have become fairly proficient at something that for most of their lives didn't even exist. They may never be as quick at it as young “tech native” texters, most of whom appear to have been born texting, but it is amazing to think how their older brains have restructured by creating new pathways in order to embrace something that not so long ago was completely alien to them. Especially when it involves having to master touch screen technology!

Talking about new technology, consider a time when a friend or relative from an older generation was introduced to the internet for the first time. They might well be pretty useless to begin with, but before you know it they're forwarding you supposedly “funny” email circulars that you probably remember not being terribly amusing over a decade ago! Older people can learn new tricks. There's no doubt about that. All that happens is a slight reduction in the speed at which we learn and the difference in speed depends largely on how motivated a person is to embrace the discomfort of trying new things throughout adulthood.

Adults who forever enjoy developing themselves and furthering their talents – whether it be learning another language, doing some spare time studies, taking up a sport or pursuing a newfound interest – usually pick up most skills relatively quickly. That is in comparison to those who since hitting adulthood have never stretched their brains but have instead remained happily cocooned, feet up and slippers on, in their same old comfy routines.

Understanding neuroplasticity inspires the dedication needed to change your brain to improve your skills.

That the brain learns to learn throughout childhood is, admittedly, an odd concept to get your head around. As well as having to learn the very basics such as walking and talking in our first couple of years there was just so much to learn before we even got anywhere near stepping through the school gates. At which point intense learning becomes the “normal” state of affairs as we are regularly confronted by and tested with situations that take us out of our comfort zone. Not just in lessons, but outside of formal learning times as we navigate the twists and turns of learning how to get on in all other aspects of life. This might be when practising sports skills, trying to work out the unfathomable rules of attraction or negotiating our way through daily social exchanges with family, friends, strangers and those regarded as arch enemies. Feeling out of your depth at that stage in life might not be particularly pleasant but it is nonetheless a familiar, if not a daily, occurrence. It's relatively easy to deal with when everybody else is in the same boat.

In adulthood, however, we have more freedom of choice and can exert much more free will over what we will and will not spend our time doing. Not surprisingly this means that we tend to gravitate towards activities that we are good at, enjoy doing or at least remain squarely within our comfort zone; things that through repetition have become well known to our brains – “set pieces.” Unfortunately, this means we become more and more unfamiliar with the feelings of struggling to grasp a new idea or skill and so we shy away from such activities as much as we can. It's human nature to be drawn towards activities that increase our sense of wellbeing, and to be repelled from those that decrease it. Alas, in doing this we inevitably turn ourselves into set piece specialists. In fact, most people spend their entire adult lives doing things they have done many times before because these are the things that can be done with the least amount of cognitive effort.

We like to operate on autopilot because it's less hassle, less stressful and tends to reduce anxiety. The problem is that the easiest route in the short term is rarely the best route in the long run. And if there's one weakness that we humans often fall foul of, it's our tendency to choose the immediate, easy rewards and worry about the long term later.

Bring it on!

Throughout most of human history, becoming a set piece specialist was absolutely fine. You spent childhood learning the basics, adolescence becoming a cog in some machine or other, and adulthood winding that cog via a repertoire of set pieces in a job for life. Food on the table to feed hungry mouths who themselves would in turn go through more or less the same cognitive transitions.

The world, however, has changed since those days. In fact the world has always been changing but, as we humans have become more and more adept at controlling and manipulating our environments, the rate of change has steadily accelerated, particularly since the Industrial Revolution when machines started getting involved. The changes used to be only really noticeable from generation to generation. Then, during the 20th century – when great technological leaps impacting on daily life occurred more regularly – they became readily apparent from one decade to the next. Now, in the 21st century, everything has gone and sped up yet again! New innovations are continually impacting on the way we work, how we socialize, how we raise children, what we do for entertainment and how we think – fast, continuous, unprecedented change that is influencing every aspect of our lives – increasing the pressure on our brains to adapt and keep up with the breakneck pace.

But, fear not, your brain is more than up for all this. If there's one thing above all others that is most impressive about your brain, it's the degree to which it can change to adapt to all the new challenges that will inevitably crop up. This is exactly the feature that made us humans the most dominant species on the planet. We are incredibly adaptable. Our brains will adapt to serve us in any given environment. Our collective ingenuity has led to the development of a variety of tools with which we can adapt our environments. By creating new environments and choosing what environments we wish to immerse ourselves in, we can in fact change our own brains. It may sound miraculous. It is!

Finding Flow

To get the best performance out of your brain, you should bear in mind what modern neuroscience has taught us are the rules of the game. Your brain will physically rewire the connections between brain areas involved in any mental ability so that the interactions between them are:

• faster
  
  
• stronger
  
  
• more efficient
  
  

So long as you take care to perform the desired mental function:

• regularly (ideally every day)
  
  
• intensively (stick at it for a decent amount of time, don't give up when it gets tough)
  
  
• over long periods of time (keep up the regular intensive training for weeks/months)
  
  

This essentially describes what is popularly described these days as “brain training.” It might sound terribly impressive and it might even have misled you into thinking that you need some special kit to do it properly.

With a whole bunch of useful brain teasers in an easily portable package, brain training devices do make training your brain on your way to and from work more convenient. They can certainly improve your devotion to self-improvement and, yes, leading companies may well have several hundreds of millions of subscribers for a web-based suite of games. But that doesn't mean you are not training your brain whenever you engage in anything that taxes your brain regularly, intensively and over long periods of time.

As you improve at any skill, hobby or mental ability you are engaging in brain training. There is no magic in the commercially available games – just convenience. The convenience might make the difference between training hard and long enough to make a tangible difference in how your brain functions, but if you are determined enough you can do it with or without these products.

The key to doing enough mental work to actually make a physical difference to how your brain functions, is finding “Flow.” Flow is a psychological term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “six-sense-mihal-i”) with a distinct meaning that has been bandied around so much it has lost much of its original simplicity.

The average capacity of working memory is seven items. By regularly trying to hold more items of information in memory at the same time you can increase your working memory capacity – gradually leading to improvements in your ability to solve problems.

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To remember what Flow really is all about, just remember Goldilocks. She wanted her porridge to be “not too hot, not too cold, but just right.” Flow comes when you challenge your brain with some kind of mental task that is “not too hard, not too easy, but just right” – keeping you keen to keep on training. If it's too easy you may well be able to keep your head down for a solid half an hour, but your brain will only invest resources in changing connectivity if it is pushed out of its comfort zone. However, if the challenge is too hard and it makes you feel stupid, convinces you that you are getting nowhere and that the task is futile, then you'll end up all frustrated, wound up and looking for something less productive to do instead. This is something that the new commercial brain training games are very good at – computer game designers are masters at finding that line where the gaming is challenging without leading to despair.

Whatever brain training you choose to do, whether it's getting to grips with a new software package, memorizing a speech or perhaps learning how to cook a particular dish, it will only change your brain if you find Flow. This is because Flow keeps you at it for long enough to trigger brain changes. Having found Flow, you will no doubt have experienced considerable enjoyment from the process and taken away some real satisfaction from your achievement; it is highly likely that you'll soon be up for another challenge. Finding Flow in the next challenge will be key to ensuring that your self-propelling belief keeps you going in the right direction and that your brain continues to invest in whatever rewiring is required.

Chapter takeaways

• By improving working memory – as far as your IQ is concerned – the only way is up.
  
  
• If you wish to progress you'll need to learn to learn again and feel comfortable being out of your comfort zone, just like you did as a young child.
  
  
• To discover the positive effects of neuroplasticity and continue to improve at something, you need to do it regularly, intensively and over long periods. That's “brain training.”
  
  
• Step beyond set pieces. Stretch yourself – the easiest route in the short term is rarely the best route in the long term.
  
  
• Remember “Flow” – set yourself goals that are not too hard, not too easy, but just right!
  
  
• Yes, you can teach an old human new tricks.