Brain Food

This week I’ve been reading two books related to brains. Brain food, perhaps? The first title is obvious: Great Myths of the Brain by Christian Jarrett. It’s a scoped collection of 41 myths, some you’ve heard many times, and others are more obscure. I suppose I find thinking about neuro-thingies interesting. Was that circular reasoning? Hmm. Anyhoo, today I’ll briefly discuss Myth #29 (“Brain Training Will Make You Smart”) and Myth #30 (“Brain Food Will Make You Even Smarter”) before we get to the second book with its less obvious title.

 

If you’re packing 41 myths into a 300+ page book, you can’t go into too much detail. But Jarrett does a very nice job in encapsulating the key research for and against each myth. There’s always an element of truth in myths. These may be profound, or they may be trivial – mostly the latter in the case of the present book, which is the point of trying to debunk such myths.

 

I generally ignore brain-training commercials. I don’t think there’s a ten-step program that will unlock your brain’s potential in any of the faddish ways being promoted. I’m certainly not going to pay good money for it. Um, except that we subscribe to the online New York Times because my wife and I enjoy the daily crossword puzzle and we’ve recently added Spelling Bee to our routine. I’ve always loved puzzles, and yes there’s a small part of me that hopes my continuing to be challenged by them daily will stave off mental deterioration as I age, but it’s mainly the pleasure of solving puzzles.

 

There is research supporting the idea that training can lead to improvement, in general. That goes for anything in life. I haven’t been watching Olympics (too cheapskate to buy a subscription and we don’t own a TV) but I do think training can improve whatever skill you’re practicing. But brain training fads claim “far transfer”, that their simple exercises extend far beyond their remit. The evidence is slim. Very slim. And the misinformation is compounded by companies (Jarrett names some names) that blur the boundaries between near and far transfer; some of what they’re doing helps in a narrow way but it’s mixed in with faddish nonsense. Jarrett also provides two vignettes – one on such programs aimed at the elderly, and the other for young kids (aimed at their parents) to supposedly give the kids a head-start in life.

 

Let’s move on to brain food. My mother has told me repeatedly that fish is brain food. Every morning (until I left home) I had a spoon of Scott’s Emulsion Cod Liver Oil – original flavor in a glass bottle. Most kids hate the stuff. I actually found it tasty and happily ate my tablespoon a day. Nowadays it comes mostly in sickly sweet orange flavor in a plastic bottle. You can’t find it easily in the U.S. so I stopped eating after moving overseas. But my mother still gets a bottle of original flavor (now hard to find) when I fly home periodically for a two-week visit. Somehow, I went on to earn my PhD at Caltech in chemistry. Was it the fishy stuff?

 

Jarrett takes this head on (in “A Fishy Tale”), and once again there isn’t good evidence supporting the link between omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and amping up your brain power. Fatty fish is good for a balanced diet, but it doesn’t make you smarter, ads notwithstanding. Then there are vitamin pills. Blah, blah, blah. But I did not know about “neuro” drinks (Jarrett names names). Oddly my students make no mention of these when apparently a Kardashian swears by them. Maybe my students don’t want to let me know they’re consumers. (In my time, the tonic of choice for exam-cramming was “essence of chicken”.)  And while I’ve heard about the supposed wonders of chocolate, I had not heard of the glucose-willpower fad. (I enjoy dark chocolate on occasion but I’m not into sugary stuff taste-wise.) Interestingly, there are experiments that “glucose in the mouth triggers reward-related activity in the brain, thus prompting participants to interpret the [experimental] task as more rewarding, which boosts their motivation”. And yes, they ran the experiment by asking students to gargle rather than drink glucose-sweetened lemonade versus artificial sweeteners (or none). But let’s move on.

 

The second book I’m reading is First Steps by paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva, a foot specialist. (There’s a good reason why researchers in his profession specialize; read his book to find out!) It starts off with familiar fossil figures such as Lucy and T. rex, but also covers the Laetoli footprints and some of the less well-known hominims. There’s also discussion on the biomechanics of walking, echoing Daniel Lieberman’s book, Exercised. There’s a nice blend of anecdotal story-telling and detailed research information, packaged in easy-to-read chapters. But since we’re talking about the brain – what does bipedalism have to do with it? After all, First Steps is subtitled “How Upright Walking Makes Us Human”. And brains are a large part of what makes us human.

 

Research on various species of Australopithecus show that bipedalism comes early, before the significant growth in brain size. Yet, the tantalizing connections and puzzles remain. DeSilva outlines Darwin’s (1871) suggestion that brain size increase “was the consequence of a suite of changes in early members of our lineage – bipedalism, tool use, and canine reduction. But the timing doesn’t appear to work. The earliest bipeds had brains that were no larger than a modern chimpanzee’s. Other researchers have proposed that walking on two legs required a large brain to balance and coordinate such a sophisticated musculoskeletal machine. Tell that to a chicken, whose brain is the size of an almond.” (DeSilva is an engaging writer!)

 

Our brains are energy-guzzling machines, grabbing ten times more energy as a proportion of body weight. Interestingly, human walking is rather energy-efficient, at least compared to chimpanzees. DeSilva speculates that walking more and tree-climbing less allowed energy to be funneled to growing the brain. Perhaps this led to cooperation or developing tools in the quest to find food (energy!). A positive feedback loop led to more food, more energy, and more brain. Richard Wrangham’s thesis in Catching Fire on the importance of cooking fits in well with this storyline. It’s a fun and interesting read (my vague recollection from over a decade ago), but not to be confused with a Hunger Games novel, if you’re presently looking for it at the library.

 

In a later chapter titled “Why Walking Helps Us Think”, there are interesting anecdotes from Darwin to Dickens about how walking can spark creative juices while solving thorny problems to boot. (Although wearing boots might weaken certain foot muscles; DeSilva is a foot expert after all.) There are some experiments exploring these links, and they are interesting, although I think still speculative. It helps if you take a walk in the woods like Thoreau, but not so much in an urban area with vehicular traffic and construction. I still remember the first time (about fifteen years ago) when a student in office hours hit a brick wall in understanding and nothing was getting through. I asked the student to take a walk around our beautiful campus and come back in 10-15 minutes. (This was before they all owned distracting cellphones) Somehow it worked. Why? I don’t know

 

Given that I’ve been playing Origins: How We Became Human because of Covid, it was interesting to read DeSilva’s speculation on the origin of human language where it relates to changes in bone, muscle, ligament, and cavity structures. Hand signals may have been early on, and bipeds have freer arms, hands, and fingers, for a wide range of activities and gestures. Somehow this leads to symbols and abstract thought. The Origins game explores this through Julian Jaynes’ theory of consciousness. I’ve borrowed the book from my local library but haven’t had the time to read it yet with all these other interesting books! First Steps also has a chapter on homo floresiensis (a.k.a. Hobbits) appropriately titled “Migration to Middle Earth”. I’ve also explored this in an Origins session report.

 

There you have it – quick highlights from two books related that provide food for thought. Or Brain Food. I’m looking forward to Jarrett’s Myth #31: “Google Will Make You Stupid, Mad, or Both.” In it, there’s a quote from psychologist Daniel Simon who writes (in relation to video games) that “there’s no reason to think that gaming will help your real world cognition any more than would just going for a walk.”