I would recommend Joshua Foer’s “Moonwalking With Einstein” to anyone and everyone, but particularly actors/actresses looking for clues on how to remember their lines better

If you are an actor or actress wanting to use the Memory Palace to help you memorise your lines then please allow me to recommend Josh Foer’s book “Moonwalking with Einstein”. Of all the books I’ve read on memory I think it is the best combination of being an entertaining read AND very informative. It’s a real page turner, with all the most important bits of hard science scattered thinly, digestibly and evenly along the path of a real life adventure into the world of memory. He went from covering the World Memory Championships as a journalist one year, to winning the US Memory Championships the very next. A very impressive feat. But also, you get the impression, one that you or I could do if we got round to putting the time in! His is the best description I’ve as yet come across of how to use the Memory Palace to memorise lines of prose or poetry. If any of you know of any better techniques please leave a comment below.

In addition to these weekly brain posts you can get a daily #braintweet by following me on Twitter, which reminds me… I haven’t found today’s one yet so I’d better get searching 😉

High neuroplasticity means kids seem to absorb new information like a sponge

Neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to adapt to the specific demands of the environments in which a person spends their waking hours. It occurs via reinforcement of connections between some brain cells (neurons) and weakening those between others. Neuroplasticity is at an all time high during childhood. This is primarily why kids seem to be able to absorb information like a sponge and pick up new skills so effortlessly.

Children’s brains are in a special, highly-adaptive state, enabling them to pick up new abilities very easily and develop a large repertoire of them very rapidly in preparation for adult life. That’s not to say that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks – it’s just that older brains have to put in more time and effort to pick up new skills. As with all things, the more you do something the easier it becomes. It may sound odd but, in a manner of speaking, you need to learn to learn, and then it comes easy. Older people tend to not bother trying to learn as intensively as during childhood, so when they do try, as they are out of the habit of learning, it all seems much harder. The trick is to never stop learning. Get back in the habit of learning, as you were naturally inclined to be during childhood, and learning becomes much easier, because your brain goes back into the “learning mode” i.e. your brain’s neuroplasticity increases.

The more a specific mental function is practiced, whether performing coordinated body movements, reading, engaging in conversation, experimenting with imagination, music, gadgets, whatever, the quicker, more accurately and more easily it can be performed the next time round. From day-to-day these improvements are usually not very noticable. But across a timeframe of weeks or months these tiny, incremental progressions add up into great leaps forward.

Practice means more brain connections and better mental function

Any particular mental function involves a different set of brain areas that must communicate with each other via rapid fire electrical messages. Connections between brain areas that regularly work together to perform a specific mental function are strengthened, whilst others that are rarely used are eventually chopped away. That is one of the most surprising findings about brain development. You would think that the more you learn the more brain cells are created and the brain gets larger. In actual fact the complete opposite is true. Over the course of adolescence, as the ability to write, calculate, communicate, use tools, acquire knowledge and many other skills improve, a whopping great 33% of the brain’s neurons are trimmed away. And that’s a fact. Adolescence is all about pruning away brain cells that aren’t providing a useful function in order to free up precious resources and make way for extra connections to be made between brain cells that ARE often used.

The grey matter (crinkly outer layer) contains synapses that connect neurons together

The upshot is that the more complex, rich and varied a person’s experiences over the course of their childhood, the more complex, rich and varied the connections between its brain cells; ultimately translating into a broader repertoire of capabilities. The importance of a parent’s influence on the development of a child’s brain cannot be over-emphasised. Parents either do or do not provide a stimulating environment in which to stretch and challenge their child’s brain. They may or may not efficiently guide, nurture and encourage the development of skills, new experiences and abilities. This does not have to incur expense. Encouraging a young brain to explore and engage with their environment, to communicate openly and to feel free to ask as many questions as they want is key to enabling a brain to develop.

In addition to these weekly blogs you can follow Dr Jack on twitter to catch his daily #braintweet.

Dr Jack will be MAKING YOUR BRAIN BETTER FOR LONGER live on ITV1’s THIS MORNING

Dr Jack’s first appearance was on Mon 13th June covering the topic of how to improve your memory

Over the summer I’ll be making a series of contributions to ITV’s THIS MORNING. The aim is to get the nation interested in how their brains work and ultimately to help YOU get the most out of YOUR brain. I’ll offer easy-to-follow advice on how to get your brain firing on all cylinders each and every day.

I’ll be answering the questions that YOU want answered. Is your brain not what it used to be? Want to know what you can do about it? Bad with money? Ever wondered why you can’t kick your habits? Ever worry about your children’s development? You can either get in touch with your questions directly by clicking here, or get in touch with THIS MORNING via The Hub.

Topics I’ll be covering in detail will range from money management to memory, from love to hate, from happiness to sorrow, and all the way from child development to holding onto your marbles in old age. You most definitely CAN teach an old dog new tricks and it is never too late to start getting more out of your brain!

Each item will kick off with a discussion with Phillip Schofield and Co. on the sofa to explore ways in which they feel their own brains’ work well and not-so-well.  We’ll then be asking members of the public to participate in experiments live in the studio. And we’ll meet some extraordinary people who’ll either demonstrate some amazing abilities or some shocking disabilities. Each item will be packed with useful tips, nudges and strategies for optimising your brain function. So, each week, you’ll be able to put my advice to the test to see how it can benefit your life by boosting your brain power.

Most people would agree that their memories are far from perfect. So, on Monday 13^th June 2011, I’ll be showing you what part of your brain creates a MEMORY for people, places, facts and faces. I’ll be putting some members of the public through their paces to see how much information a noraml “working” memory can hold. You’ll even be able to join in the fun and play along at home. I’ll reveal a classic memory trick that is virtually guaranteed to boost anyone’s memory for lists of facts or any other kind of information you might need to remember.

So tune into ITV1 from 10:30-12:30 and SORT YOUR BRAIN OUT!

Academic credentials:

• Jack has studied Brain Biology for nearly 20 years
• Jack has a First Class batchelor’s degree in Neuroscience from The University Of Nottingham
• Jack earned his PhD in the Laboratory of Neurobiology at University College London
• Last year, Jack published a paper in the prestigious Journal of Neuroscience describing human brain scanning experiments that investigated multisensory perception; carried out during a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
• Despite Jack’s extensive knowledge about the human brain, he is NOT medically qualified and so will not be able to answer questions relating to medical care.

I’ve been devouring popular science books over the last year, with a view to writing a book of my own, and there is no doubt that THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF stands out head and shoulders above the rest. Through a series of well-researched scientific breakthroughs explained via a variety of compelling real-life stories, it effortlessly convinces the reader that the human brain is a highly adaptable, “plastic” organ capable of dramatically rewiring itself, at any stage in life, to enable significant recovery from even catastrophic brain damage.

This book is nothing less than inspirational. The 20th Century doctrine of the “unchanging brain” – hardwired throughout childhood and fundamentally unalterable by the end of adolescence – is well and truly turned on its head by this remarkable compilation of case studies to the contrary.

The miracles of modern neuroscience: 65 year old Professor Pedro Bach-y-Rita crawling around on his hands and knees, just like a baby, en route to recovering his ability to first walk, then talk and ultimately go back into teaching, after his brainstem stroke. Ingenious machines, sending computer-generated sensory information to a person’s tongue in place of visual or  vestibular information lost to brain damage, enable people to see and walk again. The once seriously learning disabled Barbara Arrowsmith Young now heading up a school that uses novel programmes she developed to treat herself by forcing underdeveloped brain areas to up their game through intensive training sessions.

All of these and much, much more demonstrate that the brain CAN change. All that is required is a knowledge of exactly what is required to encourage those changes to occur – all clearly outlined in this book – and then dedication to putting the hours in to make sure those changes happen. It turns out that neuroplasticity can even explain how the miraculous psychological changes that can be enabled by psychiatric counselling might be underpinned by physical changes in the brain. Sexual attraction, love, pain, obsession, anxiety, compulsions and habits are all fundamentally influenced by neuroplasticity and the sooner the world gets to grips with this the better. Even putting the hours in using your imagination to practice cognitive skills to improve your mental abilities does so via physical changes to the number and connectivity of brain cells.

If I ran a school of brain science I would make this compulsary reading. Partly because the “neuroplastic revolution” that the author, Norman Doidge, envisages is extremely empowering to all people; not just the old and neurologically-impaired, but for every single human being on earth that wishes to improve their brain function. But also because it captures an essential truth about science – professors, medics and other experts who share with us their wisdom are not infallible. They do not, CAN not, know it all. They can only peddle the best of what has stood the test of time since they acquired their body of knowledge combined with the new research that has been confirmed by subsequent independent research. There is always the possibility that they, and their forefathers got the wrong end of the stick – which is almost certainly what happened with the concept of neuroplasticity. Consequently, we must all be critical of what we read and remain open to new findings and novel ways of thinking about how the world, and our own brains, truly work.

In addition to these website brain posts you can follow Dr Jack’s daily #braintweets

On Friday nights at 8pm starting in July 2011 Dr Jack Lewis presents THE TECH SHOW on the Discovery Science channel. Here is the promotional video that Discovery will be running across Europe, Africa and the Middle East to pique people’s curiosity about this brand new flagship series:

Across 26 half-hour episodes Jack takes viewers on a journey through some of the latest technological breakthroughs in engineering, science and biomedicine. We explore new developments in robotics, renewable energy and tornado physics. We encounter a wide variety of nutty inventors, hell-bent on creating the most bizarre water, land and air-borne vehicles the world has ever seen. We see how engineering can be guided by the latest biological research by getting to the bottom of how evolution has solved various threats to survival by giving certain creatures some uniquely brilliant abilities. And we even discover what neuroscience can learn from the art of magic!

My personal favourites include the young American scientist who creates tornados in his garage, the crazy German pilot who can loop-the-loop in a helicopter and the ingenious lizard that can evade predators by burrowing into tightly packed sand in the blink of an eye by turning its body into a wave generator!