Do you always take board games on vacation? Do you play sudoku because it's supposed to train your brain? Do you watch documentaries, even though you'd rather watch a series? But since this is supposed to keep your brain busy, you persist. The bad news: You're probably doing it all to no real effect.
According to experts, everything from technology to our eating habits and ultimately modern life is confusing the brain to branch off along neural pathways and making us slower.
Since the 1930s, IQ has risen worldwide largely due to better living conditions, better nutrition and education raised. But scientists are worried because IQ scores have been declining over the past decade, and our collective intelligence has declined by one point over the past 50 years.
Here are some surprising habits that may be "destroying" our brains.
1. Addiction to fatty foods
Eating large amounts of highly saturated fat (bacon, buttered toast, fried eggs, etc.) interferes with the brain's dopamine function, a vital neurotransmitter responsible for motivation. Studies show that a high-fat diet can impair cognitive performance, slow reaction time, damage memory, and trigger feelings of depression in rats and other animals. A study at the University of Montreal found that eating a diet high in saturated fat can affect brain function, leading to mood disorders, addiction and overeating. It's similar to what happens with drugs like heroin: the more saturated fat you eat, the more you crave it.
2. "Multitasking" - performing several tasks at the same time
Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: "The brain is not wired for multitasking. When people switch quickly from one task to another, cognitive impairment occurs. This means that we use glucose (brain fuel) faster. Multitasking prevents deep, creative thought as we switch back and forth as if we're always starting from scratch.” Just opening an email is said to be enough to lower your IQ by 10 points. He adds that talking on the phone while driving is very dangerous because our limited cognitive ability to multitask means that we are never fully focused on any one task.
3. Internet
Access to information at any moment has greatly simplified our lives, but it has become a neurological curse as we no longer rely on memory. Everything is online. Microsoft research has shown that the stability of our attention span has dropped from an average of 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
4. Don't eat too much fruit
A 2012 UCLA study in rats found that too much fructose (a simple sugar found in fruits, honey and vegetables) slows the brain by affecting the ability of insulin, which helps brain cells convert sugar into energy for thinking. At the same time, the use of omega-3 fatty acids (linseed oil, mackerel, trout) neutralizes this process. Sarah Brewer, a health nutritionist, warns that brain cells need glucose to function normally, but too much of it can lead to diabetes and excessive nervousness in a short time.
5. Reality shows
An Austrian study by psychologist Markus Appel found that reality shows disrupt our brains. Those who watched the reality show before the test wrote the test much worse than those who did not watch the show. Psychologists believe that what we watch and listen to affects our behavior, and this applies to our brain. In other words: you are what you see. "What you have been thinking about recently or have seen recently at a higher level of your consciousness, your brain has somehow predisposed in that direction," said another psychologist, Joanne Cantor.
6. Sleep disorders
Hamster studies have shown that regularly disrupting our internal circadian rhythm - day/night - halved the normal rate of new neuron birth in the hippocampus (the area of the brain involved in memory processing), and the effects were said to be noticeable even a month after the last "disruptions".
7. Chewing gum
Neuroscientist Earl Miller says: "Chewing is a physical exercise that increases blood flow to the brain and increases cognitive function by giving it extra energy." But a recent experiment put that theory to rest. During chewing, the participants' short-term memory deteriorated, e.g. they could not learn the order of the items in the list. dr. Sarah Brewer says so: "When people chew gum for hours, it can cause problems. As soon as the taste disappears, I recommend removing the gum.”
Or as they write on Science Alert: maybe the problem is not in us, but in intelligence tests. Until scientists with their fluid intelligence get to the bottom of the questions about what exactly is intelligence and how to measure it, we cannot be sure if we are really getting stupider.
