The New Science of Building Brain Power

 Intelligence Research  

Expanding upon one of the most-read New York Times Magazine features of 2012, the new book Smarter penetrates the hot new field of intelligence training to reveal what some researchers call a revolution in human intellectual abilities-and others insist is all a bunch of baloney.

Can you make yourself, your kids, and your parents smarter?

Expanding upon one of the most-read New York Times Magazine features of 2012, in Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power, author Dan Hurley penetrates the hot new field of intelligence research to reveal what researchers call a revolution in human intellectual abilities. Shattering decades of dogma, scientists began publishing studies in 2008 showing that “fluid intelligence”—the ability to learn, solve novel problems, and get to the heart of things—can be increased through training.

But is it all just hype? With vivid stories of lives transformed, science journalist Hurley delivers practical findings for people of every age and ability. Along the way, he narrates with acidtongued wit his experiences as a human guinea pig, road-testing commercial brain-training programs, learning to play the Renaissance lute, getting physically fit, even undergoing transcranial directcurrent stimulation.

“Dan Hurley isolates just what cognitive exercise boosts intelligence.  Anyone who doubts that environment can make a real difference to cognition should start with this book.”
—James R. Flynn author of What is Intelligence

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Smarter speaks to the audience that made bestsellers out of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain and Moonwalking with Einstein.

Smarter also goes after those who claim that intelligence doesn’t matter. Writers like Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers), Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) and Paul Tough (How Children Succeed) have made the case that IQ pales in importance to hard work, grit, and emotional poise. As Dan writes: “Certainly IQ is not everything; perhaps it’s not even the most important thing, but it’s definitely one of them. It’s not the only reason, but it’s one of the reasons that Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates are richer than you are. (Both Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, and Sergey Brin, who cofounded Google, were selected in adolescence, in part on the basis of scoring high on standardized tests, to attend the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins, as was Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga.) It’s how Gladwell, Goleman, and Tough wrote such awesome books. Because they’re smart, and because, as politically incorrect as it has become in polite society to say so, intelligence still matters.”

Hurley is an award-winning science journalist whose 2012 feature in the New York Times Magazine, "Can You Make Yourself Smarter?" was one of the magazine's most-read articles of the year. In 2013 he published another article for the magazine, "Jumper Cables for the Mind," describing his experience with transcranial direct-current stimulation. He has written on the science of increasing fluid intelligence for the Washington Post and Neurology, and is featured in the 2013 PBS documentary, "Smarter Brains." His books have been excerpted in Wired and Discover magazine. Hurley has written nearly two dozen science articles for the New York Times since 2005.

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