如何鍛鍊思維 讓自己變得更聰明

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，改變一下你的思維。

新年的決心，常常與吃的更健康、做更多揮汗的健身操、減肥，這些以強健身體爲主的美好願望有關。然而，很多人沒有意識到，他們可以用相似的方法來增強大腦功能。

大腦的一些區域是天生的或童年早期形成的，而其它區域，尤其是對像語言和思維這樣高級認知能力，還有感知和肌肉動運功能至關重要的大腦皮層，是可以隨着我們年齡的增長而顯著的拓展的。事實上，即使是毀滅性的失去視聽覺後，大腦仍有着能驚人的恢復能力。作爲一個治療神經疾病的內科醫生，我總能看到這種情況。

比如，我的一個病人，她9歲時因患猩紅熱而失聰，她十分善於脣語以至於經常忘記她是聾子。一次，我想也沒想，和她說着話轉身走開。她卻突然說，“我聽不到你講話了。”

你的意思是，“你看不到我了。”

“你管它叫看，”她回答說，“但對於我來說就是聽。”

脣語，即這個患者觀察別人嘴部動作，然後大腦立刻轉化成“聽”到的聲音。她的大腦把感觀的一種形式凝練轉化成另一種形式。

同樣的，盲人常常會找到“看”的其它形式。大腦的某些區域如果受不到刺激，就會萎縮和死亡。（神經科醫師經常會說“用進廢退”。）但即使是天生的盲人，大腦的視覺區域卻不會完全消亡，反而是爲其它感官重組。我們總是聽說盲人通常有着敏銳的聽覺，但是也許其它的感官功能也增強了。

比如，美國加利福尼亞大學戴維斯分校的古生物學家希拉特.佛爾邁在3歲時就失明瞭，但他利用一些高於正常人的關於三維空間和觸覺的天賦，依靠軟體動物外殼的微小變化，確認了許多新的物種。

作家威德.梅塔同樣也是很小時候就失明，大部分依靠“面部視覺”來辨明方向。面部視覺指靠物體反射聲音或吹到她臉上隱隱約約變化的氣流來感知物體的能力。一個奇異的男孩，本.昂德伍德3歲失明，於2009年16歲那年去世。他進化出一種引人注目的功能，像海豚一樣，用嘴發出類似於海豚發射的有規律的咔咔聲，然後解析附近物體反射的迴音。這種技能他掌握得很嫺熟，使他能騎車，參加體育運動，甚至玩視頻遊戲。

像本.昂德伍德和威德.梅塔一樣有些早期生活經歷然後又失明的人，看起來能很快把他們從觸覺和聽覺得到的信息轉化成可視圖像。比如，當他們用手指讀盲文時，就可以“看”點字。研究人員利用大腦功能成象技術證明，在這種情況下盲人的大腦皮層不僅是觸覺部分活動，視覺部分同樣活躍。

一個視聽覺正常的人，開發大腦神祕且非凡的能力去學習、適應和成長。我已經見證了無數有各種各樣缺陷比如中風、帕金森，甚至癡呆症的病人，學着用新的方法去做事情，不論是有意識的還是無意識的，都想辦法儘量去彌補這些不足。

大腦有如此與生俱來的適應能力，引起了人們深深的思考。我們塑造自己的大腦到達了何種的寬度和深度？大腦潛能可不可以被用來增強我們的認知能力？許多人的經歷證明了，可以。

我認識一位病人因夜裏一次脊髓感染而全身癱瘓。開始她陷入了絕望，因爲連她平時喜愛的填字遊戲都不能玩了，她感覺不到一絲的快樂。

然而幾個星期以後，她要求拿張報紙來看，至少這樣她能看到字謎的輪闊，動動眼睛看清提示。她做着這些事，奇蹟發生了。她只要一看提示，答案就自動浮現出來。接下來的幾個星期，她的視覺記憶力逐漸增強，直到她發現她只要瞥一眼，整個字謎還有那些提示就會刻在她腦海裏，然後就能馬上思考出答案。她不知道這是怎麼回事，後來她告訴我，她可以獲得這種能力。

這種能力甚至能在大約幾天內增長。哈佛研究人員發現，如果矇住受試者的眼睛大約五六天，他們的大腦就能轉換成另一種功能，比如受試者在學習盲文時，對複雜事物的觸覺會顯著的提高。

神經可塑性，即大腦可以創造出新的網路，這對於失去某種官能或認知力或運動能力的人的恢復是至關重要的。但是它也能成爲我們日常生活的一部分，通常我們小時候學東西都很容易，神經學科學家現在瞭解到大腦永不停止生長，即使是暮年也是一樣。每當我們練習舊的或學習新的技能時，現存的神經結點就會加強，而且隨着時間的推移，神經元就會與其他的神經元連結上，甚至會產生新的神經細胞。

我看到過很多關於人在五六十歲學習新的體育項目或樂器的報道，而且他們不僅十分精通，還從中獲得了很大的樂趣。一名叫伊萊扎.伯西新聞記者，五十五歲左右時，在美國巴爾的摩的皮博迪音樂學院學習堅琴，而好幾年前，她連一個樂符都不認識。在給我的一封信中，她描述到她彈奏漢德爾的《帕薩卡利亞》時的情景：“我有一種感覺，我的大腦和手指相要連通起來，形成一個新的神經元突起... ...我知道我的大腦已經發生了戲劇性的轉變。”帕西女士絕對正確：她的大腦已經發生了變化。

音樂是一種特別強有力的塑造力，聆聽或演奏音樂能讓大腦的很多區域參與進來，並且要連通起來緊密合作：從讀懂樂符到協調好手部肌肉的動作，再到感覺和表現節奏與音調，再到用情感和記憶力組織好樂曲。

不管是在新的一年還是以後，不論是學習一門新的語言、到一個新的地方旅行、培養養蜂的興趣或者僅僅是用一種新的方法去思考一個以前的問題，我們所有人都能找到刺激我們大腦生長的方法。就像爲保持身體健康而做運動一樣，挑戰一下大腦，讓它活躍起來，使用它，讓它變得靈活，活潑，這些不僅僅是爲了好玩，對我們保持認知健康尤爲重要。