What makes people clever

Their ability to take an insight and translate it into a message that illuminated my brand's benefits in a compelling, memorable way is a task few merely "book smart" people could do. I often walked away after a brilliant ad campaign presentation thinking, "Their brain just works differently. Kathleen Vohs from the University of Minnesota says the messier you are, the smarter you are.

A study Vohs published in Psychological Science featured two groups asked to devise creative uses for Ping-Pong balls. One group worked in a messy, cluttered environment while the other worked in a tidy setting. The messy group brainstormed substantially more creative and interesting ideas.

So before berating yourself for your perpetually cluttered desk, give yourself a few IQ points instead. If you love to learn, the more you'll learn and the smarter you'll get.

Science backs this up. A study from Goldsmiths University of London found that "how people invest their time and effort in their intellect" i. Two-thirds of students train for it, he says, and its judgment of the talent is so respected that for years high scorers were allowed to skip gaokao , the traditional college entrance exam. But only a tiny fraction of people have the mathematical gifts to be competitive, Zhao says, and this basically comes down to IQ.

He wants to stop the vast majority of Chinese students from wasting their time. Three years after arriving at BGI, Zhao's messy mop of hair is gone, replaced by a dark shadow across his shaved scalp. His project, meanwhile, has grown up along with him. Just a week before my visit, thousands of DNA samples arrived at the institute, each containing the genome of a person with extraordinarily high IQ.

They were collected from volunteers around the world by Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at King's College London who is now one of the project's main collaborators. Whether we like it or not, parents with the motivation—and cash—will one day be able to select traits for their darling offspring. We can already detect scores of genetic diseases early by screening embryos created in vitro. And the more we learn about the genome, the more traits we'll be able to select for or against.

Here's a menu of superbaby options, from the possible to the farcical. Like many diseases that are screened for during IVF, Tay-Sachs is caused by a single mutation: in this case, in the HEXA gene, which when altered renders the body unable to create an enzyme that breaks down fat in the brain. Destructive but not fatal, the most common form of albinism is caused by a mutation in a gene for the skin pigment melanin.

Like Tay-Sachs, it's a classic one-gene trait. US women have roughly a 12 percent chance of getting breast cancer, but a mutation of the BRCA1 tumor-suppressing gene vaults risk to 60 percent. A kid's chances of becoming an elite athlete depend on a number of traits—strength, power, endurance.

Each of these has been proven to be at least partly heritable, but the clearest connection is between the gene ACTN3 and explosive strength. Heritability of spectrum disorders is currently estimated at around 38 percent. Roughly 50 related genes and 30 gene locations have been discovered—all of which may ultimately be used for selection. Some 40 to 75 percent of obesity cases can be accounted for by genes. About 5 percent can be tied to specific mutations that are relatively easy to select against.

For the rest, there are dozens of identified variants, each with a small individual effect. Traits of psychopathy are estimated to be about 50 percent heritable, and dimensions of this disorder—grandiosity, callousness, and impulsivity—have similar genetic components.

Stature is between 60 and 80 percent heritable, with hundreds of the genetic variants identified so far. Eventually, as with IQ, whole-genome sequencing of embryos could allow parents to pick the tallest offspring of the batch. The fact that sexual orientation is influenced by genetics has been well established: Studies of siblings, twins, and adoptees suggest that genes account for at least half of the variation. A study looked at differences between conservative and liberal leanings—and found, surprisingly, three areas that might be linked to political predisposition.

But it will be a good long time before we can genetically nudge our kids to share our politics. The project has already weathered at least one serious false start. The genetic markers for IQ would pop right out. So Zhao returned, naturally, to Renmin, the high school he had just abandoned.

Zhao knew nothing about psychometrics, the branch of psychology behind the IQ test. Yang's psychometric research at Yale and Brown universities made her the perfect collaborator. But they ran up against an unexpected problem: There was no Chinese IQ test, and Renmin students' English skills weren't consistent enough to conduct the test in English. Moreover, the IQ test is supposed to be given as a one-on-one interview, so when Zhao and Yang tried to administer it to whole classes of students at once, the result was chaos and useless data.

Worst of all, getting blood samples from students proved nearly impossible, as wary parents began to raise alarms. Principal Liu had to call a meeting with parents to calm their nerves.

The collaboration with Renmin was quietly put on hold. The fortunes of the research effort changed in October , when Zhao met Steve Hsu, a professor who was spending a year in Taiwan while on sabbatical from the University of Oregon.

He is now vice president for research and graduate studies at Michigan State University. A theoretical physicist who likes to apply his mathematical muscles to a wide range of complex problems, Hsu was intrigued by a news article about BGI that briefly mentioned Zhao's project. A few emails later, he flew over to give a talk at BGI and soon became a permanent collaborator and adviser to the team. Since most of the variation in IQ is heritable, scientists have long searched for genetic differences that might account for it.

The reason we haven't found them, Hsu theorizes, is because there aren't any single genes or even a handful of genes with a big effect on IQ. Another way to become smarter is to practice meditation. In an older study , meditation was associated with better executive functioning and working memory.

These effects were observed after just four days of meditation. A study found similar results. After participants completed 8 weeks of minute guided meditation sessions, their attention, recognition ability, and working memory increased. The researchers speculated that these cognitive effects were due to the emotional benefits of meditation.

Adenosine is a brain chemical that stops the release of stimulatory substances in your brain. However, the caffeine in coffee blocks adenosine, which allows these substances to give you a boost of energy. This could help promote learning and mental performance. A study also determined that caffeine intake can enhance attention, which may help you stay focused , and better able to take in new information. Drinking too much caffeine can increase anxiety and make you jittery.

Sipping on green tea can also support your brain function. Some of these effects are due to the caffeine in green tea, which is present in small amounts. Green tea is also rich in a chemical called epigallocatechin gallate EGCG. According to a review , EGCG may facilitate the growth of the axons and dendrites in neurons. Axons and dendrites make it possible for neurons to communicate and complete cognitive tasks. Additionally, a review concluded that green tea increases attention and working memory.

This is likely due to the combination of beneficial components in green tea, rather than a single substance. Another way to boost your brain health is to eat foods with nutrients that support brain function.

This undercuts social equality, and feeds into the link between intelligence testing and eugenics, which still looms large for many. However, there is no escaping the fact that intelligence is inherited to some degree. Researchers found that the IQ of children adopted at birth bore little correlation with that of their adoptive parents , but strongly correlated with that of their biological parents. In fact, hundreds of studies all point in the same direction.

For many years, the search for specific intelligence genes proved unfruitful.