IQ can be polished

A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth.

Until now, it had been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience is innate and cannot be taught.

But, in the new study researchers describe a method for improving this skill.

First they measured the fluid intelligence of four groups of volunteers using standard tests.

Then they trained each in a memory task, a variation on Concentration, the child's card game.

The four groups underwent a half-hour of training daily for 8, 12, 17 and 19 days respectively. At the end of each training, researchers tested the participants fluid intelligence again.

The results, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences were striking.

Although the control groups also made gains, presumably because they had practice with the fluid intelligence tests, improvement in the trained groups was substantially greater. Moreover, the longer they trained, the higher their scores were.

This new finding crushes the former belief that intelligence has always been considered an immutable inherited trait.