This article was taken from the December 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Becoming more intelligent can be difficult and time consuming -- but science has smarter ways to beef up your brain.
1. Chew gum: "recent reports suggest that enhancement of memory performance while chewing gum is a fairly robust phenomenon."1
2. Meditate: "a group assigned to five days of meditation practice with the integrative body-mind training method shows better attention and control of stress than a similarly chosen control group given relaxation training."2
3. Doodle: "the doodling group performed better on the monitoring task and recalled 29 per cent more information [in a] memory test. unlike many dual-task situations, doodling while working can be beneficial."3
4. Down an energy drink: "findings suggest that energy-drink consumption can improve cognitive performance on a behavioural control task, potentially explaining the dramatic rise in popularity of these new beverages."4
5. Don't leave things unfinished: "even after one stops actively pursuing a goal, many mental processes remain focused on the goal (eg, the Zeigarnik effect), potentially occupying limited attentional and memory resources."5
1. Scholey, A, 2004 "Chewing gum and cognitive performance: a case of a functional food with function but no food?", Appetite, vol. 43, pp. 215-216
2. Tang, YY, 2007 "Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 43, pp.
3. Andrade, J, 2010 "What does doodling do?", Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol. 24 no. 1, pp. 100 - 106
4. Howard, MA, 2010 "acute effects of a glucose energy drink on behavioural control.", Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, vol. 18, no. 6, pp. 553-561
5. Masicampo, E J, 2011 "Unfulfilled goals interfere with tasks that require executive functions", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 300-311