Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower

[29 April 2008 - New York Times] A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth. Until now, it had been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience -- what psychologists call fluid intelligence -- is innate and cannot be taught (though people can raise their grades on tests of it by practicing). But in the new study, researchers describe a method for improving this skill, along with experiments to prove it works. ... The results, published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were striking. Although the control groups also made gains, presumably because they had practice with the fluid intelligence tests, improvement in the trained groups was substantially greater. Moreover, the longer they trained, the higher their scores were. All performers, from the weakest to the strongest, showed significant improvement. More