hey 42 here some of you may wake up in
the morning and think me think nice me
big smart me know meet school and
perhaps you are right but many of us no
matter what qualifications we have or
what work we do often wonder is my brain
achieving all it could achieve maybe
it's as simple as doing a bit more
exercise eating more fish and not
drinking like the world's going to end
two nights a week but are there other
factors that affect how well your brain
does its job does knowledge itself make
you smarter or is it just data that you
spit out randomly
what about puzzles and games do these
help at all after childhood or are they
just simply unescape and how about
surgeries or drugs that could give you
some kind of edge on the competition so
watch out Stephen Hawking I'm going to
climb that IQ ladder and kick you off
the top once I find out can I get
smarter first off let's all discuss the
idea of intelligence the way it's
defined in the way it's measured on a
physical level we know relatively little
about what makes one brain intelligent
compared to another there's no one bit
of structure or biochemistry that we can
point to in go aha there's a smart bit
here's what we do know the brain is made
up of hundreds of billions of cells and
different sections are responsible for
different functions such as language
movement and um memory information is
passed around the brain by neurons and
synapses where neurons are electrically
excitable cells and sign upses are the
connections between them when you are
developing these grow at an astonishing
grades you create 1300 neurons and
700,000 signups is every second this is
your DNA rapidly coding that giant
computer brain scientists actually
dissected Einstein's brain
after he died obviously a bit awkward
otherwise one of the structural
differences they found was that he had a
noticeably higher ratio of glia to
neurons with Blair being a different
kind of brain cell this indicates that
there may be some quantifiable
difference in the brains of smart people
but we still don't know for sure so for
now we focus more on ability tests
rather than the brains actual physical
structure to measure intelligence
Francis Galton was an English
statistician he was the first person to
develop some kind of standardized test
for gauging a person's intelligence he
expected to find a correlation between
intellect and offer factors such as
reflexes muscle grip and head size if
this were true I think LL Cool J would
probably be the world's smartest man as
he's basically a watermelon with bare
paws in the 1940s psychologist Raymond
cutter laid out the idea of two main
types of intelligence fluid and
crystallized fluid was the ability to
react to new situations and solve novel
problems crystallized intelligence
involves using skills and knowledge that
you already have it's not the same as
memory but it will rely a long-term
memory especially for things like
vocabulary and general knowledge in the
following years
John L Horne and John B Carroll added
further elements to cattles ideas and
the cattle horn Carroll theory was born
and it is the basis of most current IQ
testing the average IQ is 100 with the
huge majority of people sitting between
70 and 130 a score of both 130 is
considered gifted and above 144 is
genius level William James Sidis were
supposed to have had the highest IQ of
all time with a possible number of 300
he entered Harvard for mathematics in
1910 in just 11 years old now where two
smartness come from this is the big
nature versus nurture question if you
take the child of two knuckle-dragging
morons and give it to some fancy-pants
genius academics will lap child grow
into a speculative brain box or a crayon
chewing Bo
we used to think that the bond was more
even between the two factors but as more
evidence appears we see that genetics is
by far the most important factor in how
smart a child can become Robert Plomin
working at King's College London ran the
Colorado adoption project which began
back in 1975 for over 30 years they
tracked adopted children their adoptive
parents and their biological parents to
see where the most influence came from
in terms of intelligence
they also used control families where
the kids were raised normally by their
biological parents in the control groups
they found a strong correlation between
the parents and the children's IQs so
this could have been all nature or
nurture or a balance of the two
but with the adopted children there is
exactly the same correlation to their
biological parent and zero correlation
of their intelligence with their
adoptive parents the people who actually
raised them so smart adoptive parents
are not able to raise a smart adopted
child if the biological parents of that
child punt smart to begin with no matter
what the adoptive parents do you can't
teach an old dog new tricks or a stupid
kid how to play the piano what's more it
seems that most of your personality is
also genetic so things like being
introverted and extroverted come from
your DNA not from your home environment
so it's nurture completely irrelevant
no our environment still has a big
influence on us especially in terms of
behavior but psychologist Judith rich
Harris believes that we have been
focusing on the wrong part of it the
purpose of childhood is to prepare us to
be an adult and being an adult does not
require us to get on with your parents
obviously it's preferable so please
don't finish this video and go shout I
don't need you anymore whilst your mom
is making dinner because you won't get
it it's your peers that influence your
behavior the most that's why the
children of immigrants will speak like
the local popular
not like mom and dad habits like smoking
and drinking are normally picked up from
peers but a disposition to addiction is
passed down genetically which is why
parents who smoke often have children
who smoke - they are not copying their
parents they usually start smoking with
their peers and then the genes kick in
that makes them hopelessly addicted if
you want to try and give your brain a
boost you can't mess with your genetics
so I'm sorry to say you're kind of
limited to what you were given but you
can improve your crystallized
intelligence underthink called your
working memory which helps your fluid
intelligence to function as well as
possible much like the gym the more
effort you put in the better results you
get out so slip your brain into some
spandex and make sure you work it out
every day you should challenge yourself
as often as you can and try to do things
the hard way
like working out your own route on a map
rather than just following that blue
arrow on your sat-nav like it's your
guardian angel although please don't
write me an angry comment from a car
park three miles away because you got
lost trying to buy milk it's not my
fault you have no sense of direction
novelty is an important factor - if you
always watch the same show sit in the
same chair and eat the same dinner then
not only do you really need to clean
your sofa but your brain is not getting
the new inputs it needs to learn more
try taking a different route to school
or work and try and learn a new skill
like origami or knitting or whatever the
hell this is the easiest way to get
novelty is by networking either in the
real world or online other people's
ideas may often be weird terrifying or
confusing but they will enable you to
build new ones of your own it's no
coincidence that over the centuries
major jumps in Science and Technology
occur as we improve communication all
ideas are built off of other ideas so
try to steal as many as possible from
other people and become the supervillain
you were destined to be finally for
those of you who find learning
Google there is light at the end of the
tunnel but that may be because they just
turned up the voltage too high and
you're being electrocuted that's right
a study from 2013 found that stimulating
the brain with a mild electric current
could lead to people learning five times
faster than normal and with good
retention six months later not just in
the immediate aftermath if any of you
are thinking of licking the car battery
before doing your homework don't if you
really think it's a good idea to go out
of your way to electrocute your brain
then passing that maths test is the
least of your worries you should
probably sit in the corner and stay away
from sharp objects I'm sorry to tell you
but your parents were not intelligent
thanks for the view subscribe for more
42 do you ever hear a noise not a bump
in the night per se but a hope you'll
probably pass by anything nothing more
about it but this is the smallest town
in all of America with a grand
population of just one