Cognitive Enhancement Without Drugs

This is Elizabeth Ricker. She’s a Harvard-and-MIT-trained neuroscientist and researcher, who now runs the “Citizen Science” DIY-neurohacking organization, NeuroEducate.

Sounds fun! What’s it about?

The philosophy that spurs on her research and practice can be summed up as follows:

❝I’m not going to leave my brain up to my doctor or [anyone else]… My brain is my own responsibility, and I’m going to do the best that I can to optimize it❞

Her goal is not just to optimize her own brain though; she wants to make the science accessible to everyone.

What’s this about Citizen Science?

“Citizen Science” is the idea that while there’s definitely an important role in society for career academics, science itself should be accessible to all. And, not just the conclusions, but the process too.

This can take the form of huge experiments, often facilitated these days by apps where we opt-in to allow our health metrics (for example) to be collated with many thousands of others, for science. It can also involve such things as we talked about recently, getting our own raw genetic data and “running the numbers” at home to get far more comprehensive and direct information than the genetic testing company would ever provide us.

For Ricker, her focus is on the neuroscience side of biohacking, thus, neurohacking.

I’m ready to hack my brain! Do I need a drill?

Happily not! Although… Bone drills for the skull are very convenient instruments that make it quite hard to go wrong even with minimal training. The drill bit has a little step/ledge partway down, which means you can only drill through the thickness of the skull itself, before the bone meeting the wider part of the bit stops you from accidentally drilling into the brain. Still, please don’t do this at home.

What you can do at home is a different kind of self-experimentation…

If you want to consider which things are genuinely resulting in cognitive enhancement and which things are not, you need to approach the matter like a scientist. That means going about it in an organized fashion, and recording results.

There are several ways cognitive enhancement can be measured, including:

• Learning and memory
• Executive function
• Emotional regulation
• Creative intelligence

Let’s look at each of them, and what can be done. We don’t have a lot of room here; we’re a newsletter not a book, but we’ll cover one of Ricker’s approaches for each:

Learning and memory

This one’s easy. We’re going to leverage neuroplasticity (neurons that fire together, wire together!) by simple practice, and introduce an extra element to go alongside your recall. Perhaps a scent, or a certain item of clothing. Tell yourself that clinical studies have shown that this will boost your recall. It’s true, but that’s not what’s important; what’s important is that you believe it, and bring the placebo effect to bear on your endeavors.

You can test your memory with word lists, generated randomly by AI, such as this one:

Random Word List Generator

You’ll soon find your memory improving—but don’t take our word for it!

Executive function

Executive function is the aspect of your brain that tells the other parts how to work, when to work, and when to stop working. If you’ve ever spent 30 minutes thinking “I need to get up” but you were stuck in scrolling social media, that was executive dysfunction.

This can be trained using the Stroop Color and Word Test, which shows you words, specifically the names of colors, which will themselves be colored, but not necessarily in the color the word pertains to. So for example, you might be shown the word “red”, colored green. Your task is to declare either the color of the word only, ignoring the word itself, or the meaning of the word only, ignoring its appearance. It can be quite challenging, but you’ll get better quite quickly:

The Stroop Test: Online Version

Emotional Regulation

This is the ability to not blow up angrily at the person with whom you need to be diplomatic, or to refrain from laughing when you thought of something funny in a sombre situation.

It’s an important part of cognitive function, and success or failure can have quite far-reaching consequences in life. And, it can be trained too.

There’s no online widget for this one, but: when and if you’re in a position to safely* do so, think about something that normally triggers a strong unwanted emotional reaction. It doesn’t have to be something life-shattering, but just something that you feel in some way bad about. Hold this in your mind, sit with it, and practice mindfulness. The idea is to be able to hold the unpleasant idea in your mind, without becoming reactive to it, or escaping to more pleasant distractions. Build this up.

*if you perchance have PTSD, C-PTSD, or an emotional regulation disorder, you might want to talk this one through with a qualified professional first.

Creative Intelligence

Another important cognitive skill, and again, one that can be cultivated and grown.

The trick here is volume. A good, repeatable test is to think of a common object (e.g. a rock, a towel, a banana) and, within a time constraint (such as 15 minutes) list how many uses you can think of for that item.

Writer’s storytime: once upon a time, I was sorting through an inventory of medical equipment with a colleague, and suggested throwing out our old arterial clamps, as we had newer, better ones—in abundance. My colleague didn’t want to part with them, so I challenged him “Give me one use for these, something we could in some possible world use them for that the new clamps don’t do better, and we’ll keep them”. He said “Thumbscrews”, and I threw my hands up in defeat, saying “Fine!”, as he had technically fulfilled my condition.

What’s the hack to improve this one? Just more volume. Creativity, as it turns out, isn’t something we can expend—like a muscle, it grows the more we use it. And because the above test is repeatable (with different objects), you can track your progress.

And if you feel like using your grown creative muscle to write/paint/compose/etc your magnum opus, great! Or if you just want to apply it to the problem-solving of everyday life, also great!

In summary…

Our brain is a wonderful organ with many functions. Society expects us to lose these as we get older, but the simple, scientific truth is that we can not only maintain our cognitive function, but also enhance and grow it as we go.

Want to know more from today’s featured expert?

You might enjoy her book, “Smarter Tomorrow”, which we reviewed back in March

Protein vs Sarcopenia

This is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. A medical doctor, she’s board-certified in family medicine, and has also engaged in research and clinical practice in the fields of geriatrics and nutritional sciences.

A quick note…

We’re going to be talking a bit about protein metabolism today, and it’s worth noting that Dr. Lyon personally is vehemently against vegetarianism/veganism, and considers red meat to be healthy.

Scientific consensus on the other hand, holds that vegetarianism and veganism are fine for most people if pursued in an informed and mindful fashion, that white meat and fish are also fine for most people, and red meat is simply not.

If you’d like a recap on the science of any of that:

• Protein: How Much Do We Need, Really?
• Plant vs Animal Protein: Diversity is Key
• Do We Need Animal Products to be Healthy?

Nevertheless, if we look at the science that she provides, the advice is sound when applied to protein in general and without an undue focus on red meat.

How much protein is enough?

In our article linked above, we gave 1–2g/kg/day

Dr. Lyons gives the more specific 1.6g/kg/day for adults older than 40 (this is where sarcopenia often begins!) and laments that many sources offer 0.8g/kg.

To be clear, that “per kilogram” means per kilogram of your bodyweight. For Americans, this means dividing lbs by 2.2 to get the kg figure.

Why so much protein?

Protein is needed to rebuild not just our muscles, but also our bones, joint tissues, and various other parts of us:

We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of

Additionally, our muscles themselves are important for far more than just moving us (and other things) around.

As Dr. Lyon explains: sarcopenia, the (usually age-related) loss of muscle mass, does more than just make us frail; it also messes up our metabolism, which in turn messes up… Everything else, really. Because everything depends on that.

This is because our muscles themselves use a lot of our energy, and/but also store energy as glycogen, so having less of them means:

• getting a slower metabolism
• the energy that can’t be stored in muscle tissue gets stored somewhere else (like the liver, and/or visceral fat)

So, while for example the correlation between maintaining strong muscles and avoiding non-alcoholic fatty liver disease may not be immediately obvious, it is clear when one follows the metabolic trail to its inevitable conclusion.

Same goes for avoiding diabetes, heart disease, and suchlike, though those things are a little more intuitive.

How can we get so much protein?

It can seem daunting at first to get so much protein if you’re not used to it, especially as protein is an appetite suppressant, so you’ll feel full sooner.

It can especially seem daunting to get so much protein if you’re trying to avoid too many carbs, and here’s where Dr. Lyon’s anti-vegetarianism does have a point: it’s harder to get lean protein without meat/fish.

That said, “harder” does not mean “impossible” and even she acknowledges that lentils are great for this.

If you’re not vegetarian or vegan, collagen supplementation is a good way to make up any shortfall, by the way.

And for everyone, there are protein supplements available if we want them (usually based on whey protein or soy protein)

Anything else we need to do?

Yes! Eating protein means nothing if you don’t do any resistance work to build and maintain muscle. This can take various forms, and Dr. Lyon recommends lifting weights and/or doing bodyweight resistance training (calisthenics, Pilates, etc).

Here are some previous articles of ours, consistent with the above:

• Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
• Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise
• How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
• Exercises To Do (And Ones To Avoid) If You Have Osteoporosis

Take care!