如何锻炼思维 让自己变得更聪明

This Year, Change Your Mind

NEW Year’s resolutions often have to do with eating more healthfully, going to the gym more, giving up sweets, losing weight — all admirable goals aimed at improving one’s physical health. Most people, though, do not realize that they can strengthen their brains in a similar way.

While some areas of the brain are hard-wired from birth or early childhood, other areas — especially in the cerebral cortex, which is central to higher cognitive powers like language and thought, as well as sensory and motor functions — can be, to a remarkable extent, rewired as we grow older. In fact, the brain has an astonishing ability to rebound from damage — even from something as devastating as the loss of sight or hearing. As a physician who treats patients with neurological conditions, I see this happen all the time.

For example, one patient of mine who had been deafened by scarlet fever at the age of 9, was so adept at lip-reading that it was easy to forget she was deaf. Once, without thinking, I turned away from her as I was speaking. “I can no longer hear you,” she said sharply.

“You mean you can no longer see me,” I said.

“You may call it seeing,” she answered, “but I experience it as hearing.”

Lip-reading, seeing mouth movements, was immediately transformed for this patient into “hearing” the sounds of speech in her mind. Her brain was converting one mode of sensation into another.

In a similar way, blind people often find ways of “seeing.” Some areas of the brain, if not stimulated, will atrophy and die. (“Use it or lose it,” neurologists often say.) But the visual areas of the brain, even in someone born blind, do not entirely disappear; instead, they are redeployed for other senses. We have all heard of blind people with unusually acute hearing, but other senses may be heightened, too.

For example, Geerat Vermeij, a biologist at the University of California-Davis who has been blind since the age of 3, has identified many new species of mollusks based on tiny variations in the contours of their shells. He uses a sort of spatial or tactile giftedness that is beyond what any sighted person is likely to have.

The writer Ved Mehta, also blind since early childhood, navigates in large part by using “facial vision” — the ability to sense objects by the way they reflect sounds, or subtly shift the air currents that reach his face. Ben Underwood, a remarkable boy who lost his sight at 3 and died at 16 in 2009, developed an effective, dolphin-like strategy of emitting regular clicks with his mouth and reading the resulting echoes from nearby objects. He was so skilled at this that he could ride a bike and play sports and even video games.

People like Ben Underwood and Ved Mehta, who had some early visual experience but then lost their sight, seem to instantly convert the information they receive from touch or sound into a visual image — “seeing” the dots, for instance, as they read Braille with a finger. Researchers using functional brain imagery have confirmed that in such situations the blind person activates not only the parts of the cortex devoted to touch, but parts of the visual cortex as well.

One does not have to be blind or deaf to tap into the brain’s mysterious and extraordinary power to learn, adapt and grow. I have seen hundreds of patients with various deficits — strokes, Parkinson’s and even dementia — learn to do things in new ways, whether consciously or unconsciously, to work around those deficits.

That the brain is capable of such radical adaptation raises deep questions. To what extent are we shaped by, and to what degree do we shape, our own brains? And can the brain’s ability to change be harnessed to give us greater cognitive powers? The experiences of many people suggest that it can.

One patient I knew became totally paralyzed overnight from a spinal cord infection. At first she fell into deep despair, because she couldn’t enjoy even little pleasures, like the daily crossword she had loved.

After a few weeks, though, she asked for the newspaper, so that at least she could look at the puzzle, get its configuration, run her eyes along the clues. When she did this, something extraordinary happened. As she looked at the clues, the answers seemed to write themselves in their spaces. Her visual memory strengthened over the next few weeks, until she found that she was able to hold the entire crossword and its clues in her mind after a single, intense inspection — and then solve it mentally. She had had no idea, she later told me, that such powers were available to her.

This growth can even happen within a matter of days. Researchers at Harvard found, for example, that blindfolding sighted adults for as few as five days could produce a shift in the way their brains functioned: their subjects became markedly better at complex tactile tasks like learning Braille.

Neuroplasticity — the brain’s capacity to create new pathways — is a crucial part of recovery for anyone who loses a sense or a cognitive or motor ability. But it can also be part of everyday life for all of us. While it is often true that learning is easier in childhood, neuroscientists now know that the brain does not stop growing, even in our later years. Every time we practice an old skill or learn a new one, existing neural connections are strengthened and, over time, neurons create more connections to other neurons. Even new nerve cells can be generated.

I have had many reports from ordinary people who take up a new sport or a musical instrument in their 50s or 60s, and not only become quite proficient, but derive great joy from doing so. Eliza Bussey, a journalist in her mid-50s who now studies harp at the Peabody conservatory in Baltimore, could not read a note of music a few years ago. In a letter to me, she wrote about what it was like learning to play Handel’s “Passacaille”: “I have felt, for example, my brain and fingers trying to connect, to form new synapses. ... I know that my brain has dramatically changed.” Ms. Bussey is no doubt right: her brain has changed.

Music is an especially powerful shaping force, for listening to and especially playing it engages many different areas of the brain, all of which must work in tandem: from reading musical notation and coordinating fine muscle movements in the hands, to evaluating and expressing rhythm and pitch, to associating music with memories and emotion.

Whether it is by learning a new language, traveling to a new place, developing a passion for beekeeping or simply thinking about an old problem in a new way, all of us can find ways to stimulate our brains to grow, in the coming year and those to follow. Just as physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy body, challenging one’s brain, keeping it active, engaged, flexible and playful, is not only fun. It is essential to cognitive fitness.

今年，改变一下你的思维。

新年的决心，常常与吃的更健康、做更多挥汗的健身操、减肥，这些以强健身体为主的美好愿望有关。然而，很多人没有意识到，他们可以用相似的方法来增强大脑功能。

大脑的一些区域是天生的或童年早期形成的，而其它区域，尤其是对像语言和思维这样高级认知能力，还有感知和肌肉动运功能至关重要的大脑皮层，是可以随着我们年龄的增长而显著的拓展的。事实上，即使是毁灭性的失去视听觉后，大脑仍有着能惊人的恢复能力。作为一个治疗神经疾病的内科医生，我总能看到这种情况。

比如，我的一个病人，她9岁时因患猩红热而失聪，她十分善于唇语以至于经常忘记她是聋子。一次，我想也没想，和她说着话转身走开。她却突然说，“我听不到你讲话了。”

你的意思是，“你看不到我了。”

“你管它叫看，”她回答说，“但对于我来说就是听。”

唇语，即这个患者观察别人嘴部动作，然后大脑立刻转化成“听”到的声音。她的大脑把感观的一种形式凝练转化成另一种形式。

同样的，盲人常常会找到“看”的其它形式。大脑的某些区域如果受不到刺激，就会萎缩和死亡。（神经科医师经常会说“用进废退”。）但即使是天生的盲人，大脑的视觉区域却不会完全消亡，反而是为其它感官重组。我们总是听说盲人通常有着敏锐的听觉，但是也许其它的感官功能也增强了。

比如，美国加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校的古生物学家希拉特.佛尔迈在3岁时就失明了，但他利用一些高于正常人的关于三维空间和触觉的天赋，依靠软体动物外壳的微小变化，确认了许多新的物种。

作家威德.梅塔同样也是很小时候就失明，大部分依靠“面部视觉”来辨明方向。面部视觉指靠物体反射声音或吹到她脸上隐隐约约变化的气流来感知物体的能力。一个奇异的男孩，本.昂德伍德3岁失明，于2009年16岁那年去世。他进化出一种引人注目的功能，像海豚一样，用嘴发出类似于海豚发射的有规律的咔咔声，然后解析附近物体反射的回音。这种技能他掌握得很娴熟，使他能骑车，参加体育运动，甚至玩视频游戏。

像本.昂德伍德和威德.梅塔一样有些早期生活经历然后又失明的人，看起来能很快把他们从触觉和听觉得到的信息转化成可视图像。比如，当他们用手指读盲文时，就可以“看”点字。研究人员利用大脑功能成象技术证明，在这种情况下盲人的大脑皮层不仅是触觉部分活动，视觉部分同样活跃。

一个视听觉正常的人，开发大脑神秘且非凡的能力去学习、适应和成长。我已经见证了无数有各种各样缺陷比如中风、帕金森，甚至痴呆症的病人，学着用新的方法去做事情，不论是有意识的还是无意识的，都想办法尽量去弥补这些不足。

大脑有如此与生俱来的适应能力，引起了人们深深的思考。我们塑造自己的大脑到达了何种的宽度和深度？大脑潜能可不可以被用来增强我们的认知能力？许多人的经历证明了，可以。

我认识一位病人因夜里一次脊髓感染而全身瘫痪。开始她陷入了绝望，因为连她平时喜爱的填字游戏都不能玩了，她感觉不到一丝的快乐。

然而几个星期以后，她要求拿张报纸来看，至少这样她能看到字谜的轮阔，动动眼睛看清提示。她做着这些事，奇迹发生了。她只要一看提示，答案就自动浮现出来。接下来的几个星期，她的视觉记忆力逐渐增强，直到她发现她只要瞥一眼，整个字谜还有那些提示就会刻在她脑海里，然后就能马上思考出答案。她不知道这是怎么回事，后来她告诉我，她可以获得这种能力。

这种能力甚至能在大约几天内增长。哈佛研究人员发现，如果蒙住受试者的眼睛大约五六天，他们的大脑就能转换成另一种功能，比如受试者在学习盲文时，对复杂事物的触觉会显著的提高。

神经可塑性，即大脑可以创造出新的网路，这对于失去某种官能或认知力或运动能力的人的恢复是至关重要的。但是它也能成为我们日常生活的一部分，通常我们小时候学东西都很容易，神经学科学家现在了解到大脑永不停止生长，即使是暮年也是一样。每当我们练习旧的或学习新的技能时，现存的神经结点就会加强，而且随着时间的推移，神经元就会与其他的神经元连结上，甚至会产生新的神经细胞。

我看到过很多关于人在五六十岁学习新的体育项目或乐器的报道，而且他们不仅十分精通，还从中获得了很大的乐趣。一名叫伊莱扎.伯西资讯记者，五十五岁左右时，在美国巴尔的摩的皮博迪音乐学院学习坚琴，而好几年前，她连一个乐符都不认识。在给我的一封信中，她描述到她弹奏汉德尔的《帕萨卡利亚》时的情景：“我有一种感觉，我的大脑和手指相要连通起来，形成一个新的神经元突起... ...我知道我的大脑已经发生了戏剧性的转变。”帕西女士绝对正确：她的大脑已经发生了变化。

音乐是一种特别强有力的塑造力，聆听或演奏音乐能让大脑的很多区域参与进来，并且要连通起来紧密合作：从读懂乐符到协调好手部肌肉的动作，再到感觉和表现节奏与音调，再到用情感和记忆力组织好乐曲。

不管是在新的一年还是以后，不论是学习一门新的语言、到一个新的地方旅行、培养养蜂的兴趣或者仅仅是用一种新的方法去思考一个以前的问题，我们所有人都能找到刺激我们大脑生长的方法。就像为保持身体健康而做运动一样，挑战一下大脑，让它活跃起来，使用它，让它变得灵活，活泼，这些不仅仅是为了好玩，对我们保持认知健康尤为重要。