The Missing Method

Software For Your Brain-Enhancement Program

by John Morgenthaler January 1999

In 1990 when we (Ward Dean, MD and I) were finishing up Smart Drugs & Nutrients, we were aware that there was one glaring hole in the method we were prescribing. The book offered a collection of tools that could be helpful in improving your brain function but no way of getting feedback on that improvement — there was no measurement of success or failure.

Naturally, most people used a common sense approach: they tried one smart drug after another until one seemed to make them feel better, more alert or whatever. But that method alone is not good enough because, as we knew even then, one can be mentally enhanced (or impaired) and not know it. Think about that for a moment. How often have you found that you had done something stupid and then (after the fact) realized that you weren’t totally on that day? Or, how often have you found yourself solving a puzzle and then (again, after the fact) realized that you might not have normally been able to solve that puzzle — somehow your brain was serving you better than usual.

The point is that we have a blind spot when it comes to accessing your own brain function. If you are hungry, your body tells you so. If your blood carbon dioxide level is going up, you feel an intense urge to breathe. But we don’t seem to have a built in sensor that lets us know what our relative level of cognitive function is. For some people, this may be a blessing in disguise but for the rest of us (who would like to increase our intelligence) we need this feedback. Without such a feedback mechanism we have no reliable way of knowing if the deprenyl we’re taking is really improving our brain function or just hyping us up a little bit. It is like embarking on a weight loss program with a strange rule: no scales or mirrors. Obviously, it would be very difficult to achieve any weight loss. It is even imaginable that you might employ an aggressive dietary program and only succeed at increasing your weight.

So the lack of a reliable scale was that big glaring hole in our method and all we could suggest (in the book) was that people ask their friends and family members to give them feedback. Now there is something much better, a quick and inexpensive software tool called THINKfast™. The test takes about 5 minutes and gives you a composite measure of reaction time, perceptual threshold, working memory, and memory capacity. This gives you a pretty good measure of how your brain is operating in that moment. By taking the test once per day, you can get a line chart of your progress over time. It also has a function for inserting notes for each time you take the test.

With this tool I can now recommend a brain enhancement protocol that works for everybody, independent of individual biochemistry. The method is simple: take the test every day for a few weeks, then introduce, one at a time, this or that intervention... anything goes. Try deprenyl for a couple weeks, then go without it. Try stretching daily. Try a new type of exercise. Try a multivitamin or stop taking your mutivitamin. After you accumulate a little bit of data, analyze the results and you may find some surprises. I did.

I have been using “the method” for a few months now. For the first two weeks my score when up sharply. During this time I did not introduce any changes in my nutritional regimen: I was taking only a multivitamin, thyroid, an adrenal supplement, exercise with weights twice per week, and GHB at night. The steady rise in my scores was, of course, due to learning how to take the test. But eventually, I hit a plateau which was plainly displayed in the line graph.

Then, I ran out of GHB and, after a few days, there was a slight but noticeable change in my test scores. Surprisingly, the scores went up! This kind of unexpected result is exhilarating for me because it proves the value of “the method”: without it, I would never have suspected GHB as having any cognitive impairing effect on me. For my purpose of enhancing my own brain function, it does not matter why GHB had this effect, only that it did. But, I suppose that GHB somehow interfered with the quality of my sleep (even though it improves sleep for most people). And, this was enough interference to show up in my daily scores.

A few weeks later, I stepped up my exercise program and found that I got another change in my scores, this time for the better. The surprise here was the degree of change: my scores actually improved by several notches on the scale, an unusually large change. Clearly, the time it takes me to exercise is well worth it. I always suspected this but somehow, getting this clear and objective feedback has made a big difference. I now find it much easier to talk myself into going to the gym.

Also instructive, was my experience with Acetyl l-Carnitine (ALC). I had tried ALC several times before but never really noticed anything from it and so I did not expect it to do anything this time. But within two days after introducing 2 grams per day of ALC, my test scores took another abrupt jump upward. After several weeks on ALC, the scores were still significantly higher than before but (and this is why I emphasize this example) I most certainly did not “feel” anything from it. And, if it weren’t for the test, I would have definitely discontinued the ALC.

One final example and this is about the effects of stress, or rather the psychological response to stress, on test scores. I lost my book keeper and my coworker and I had to jump in and (without training) figure out how to keep the situation under control. It was an extremely stressful four days for both of us before we finally had trained help arrive. But my coworker was sort of enjoying the challenge ... I was resisting the experience and dragging my feet all the way. As you might expect, my test scores went down very dramatically during this time. My coworker reached an all time peak! Hmm. Perhaps I don’t have a bright future in accounting.

Article reprinted with permission from Smart Drugs News:
Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute
PO Box 4029, Menlo Park, CA 94026 USA
(650) 321-CERI

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