How To Improve Your Ability To Learn

From turning down the music to snacking on fish, the latest research on how to improve your ability to learn.

- Sam Island

Chowing down on fish can pump up your brain Millennia ago, humans were doing pretty well for themselves, but it’s when they settled around the basins of large rivers that civiliz ations really started to flourish. Think of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley: “Humans got much smarter and more sophisticated when they lived closer to rivers,” says Dr Cyrus Raji, a resident radiologist at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

So it ’s not entirely surprising that in a 2014 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Raji and his colleagues discovered consuming fish can actually enhance the physical size of the brain. Examining 260 subjects in their late 70s with no cognitive defects, the researchers found that the hippocampus—the learning centre of the brain—was 14 per cent larger in those who ate baked or broiled fish on a weekly basis than in those who did not. The omega-3 fatty acids contained in fish also improved the performance of neurons in the brain’s frontal lobe, an area that is crucial for executive functions like short-term memory and task planning.

“If you have neurons that are bigger, stronger and can make better connections to other neurons, they’re going to be able to do their job more effectively,” Raji says. Plenty of seafood —mackarel, tuna, mussels, shrimp—is rich in omega-3s. Fish may be the secret to heftier brains, but variety remains the spice of life.

It’s possible to become a virtuoso at any age If you dream of appearing onstage at a concert hall but worry that a lack of childhood music lessons has thwarted your musical ambition, some good news: researchers at the University of Chicago have determined that absolute, or “perfect,” pitch—the ability to identify and reproduce a note after hearing it—may be learnt into adulthood.