I'm interested in what medicines and supplements people are taking to improve their brain plasticity.
Visit /r/nootropics, although you probably already have heard of this community.
Can You Get Smarter?
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Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#12>YOU can increase the size of your muscles by pumping iron and improve your stamina with aerobic training.
How come? You increase the size of the muscles by lifting heavy.
Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#13My dad went from being an auto mechanic to learning to code when he was 63 and he's 77 now and argues with me about Drupal vs Joomla over dinner. It's only one sample but I'm convinced him switching careers extended his neural plasticity considerably.
Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#14>YOU can increase the size of your muscles by pumping iron and improve your stamina with aerobic training. How come? You increase the size of the muscles by lifting heavy.
That's what pumping iron means.
Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is terrifying. I'm 32. That means in slightly over 20 years I am going to slowly become brain dead. By the time they cure death in my 70s, I will be too old to enjoy it unless they also can reverse this.
The cure to death even partially is probably more that 100 years away from us.
If that. Many people say the reason cancer kills everyone eventually is that cells in our body wants to be free and it takes that this many generations to declare their independence and rebel against the perfectly tuned totalitarian system that is our body.
Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#16I'm interested in what medicines and supplements people are taking to improve their brain plasticity.
Valproate supposedly increases plasticity for some skills:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24831-learning-drugs-...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valproate
Taking acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, also may increase plasticity: http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2012/Re-opening_Windows__Manipulati...
Here is a list of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylcholinesterase_inhibitor...
There are a few other ways to potentially increase neuroplasticity:
Blood transfusions from young people or children to old people: http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v20/n6/full/nm.3569.html
Transplanting inhibitory neurons: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627315...
Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cure to death even partially is probably more that 100 years away from us.
If that. Many people say the reason cancer kills everyone eventually is that cells in our body wants to be free and it takes that this many generations to declare their independence and rebel against the perfectly tuned totalitarian system that is our body.
Maybe your body, certainly not mine. I'm not sure who is in control - not me.
Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#18Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#19I'm interested in what medicines and supplements people are taking to improve their brain plasticity.
Valproate supposedly increases plasticity for some skills: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24831-learning-drugs-... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valproate Taking acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, also may increase plasticity: http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2012/Re-opening_Windows__Manipulati... Here is a list of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors: https://en.wikipedi…
Mild warning about valproate: it's associated with PCOS (so only relevant to women).
Re: Can You Get Smarter?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't even enough time to significantly increase your strength at a gym, which we know is possible and observable. Why anyone would think this is enough training to produce noticeable effects baffles me.
Your analogy isn't appropriate. The brain is not made of muscle tissue.
The purpose of the analogy (as I understood it) was that there are important, extremely large effects that are caused by behavior X (in this case, exercise). But if we put exercise to the same test, we would fail to notice those important and extremely large effects. So by using so little training, we learn little about what effects it _could_ have -- it could work, but we wouldn't know unless it worked 10-100x faster than other important systems we rely on.