Slashdot Mirror
Smarter Children Through Food Supplements
An anonymous reader writes "Baby rats (mmm...baby rats) fed a little extra choline in utero popped out with brain cells dramatically bigger and faster than pups who didn't receive the supplement. Duke University researchers say the implications are profound for humans and the future of learning."
Careful...... It should also be noted that in neurons in the hippocampus (and elsewhere), when the threshold for firing is decreased, the propensity for epileptiform discharges increases. The authors of the study claim that the neurons are bigger and fire more easily. I suppose that the ease of firing could simply be related to simple cable theory as predicted by Hodgkin and Huxley, but their explanation of increased dendritic count could also explain it nicely. However, other explanations could also be correct such as increased or upregulated glutamatergic channel count or increased receptor count.
researchers say the implications are profound for humans and the future of learning
At any rate, I regardless of the actual model, these sorts of public proclamations are troublesome as there are now going to be thousands upon thousands that will go out and start purchasing choline supplements just like their mass purchasing of melatonin (extracted from bovine pineal gland commonly, prion diseases anyone?), or ephedra (cardiac arrest anyone?), Aristolochia fangchi (kidney damage or cancer anyone?), shark cartilage (simply a lighter wallet anyone?), or any other unproven (not a troll, I am a scientist folks, so I want proof) supplement.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
It's that stuff you put in your swimming pool. I guess if you want smart kids, you should go swimming a lot.
So now we get to find out if overclocking the brain
with choline will lead to nasty side effects?
I would think that some percentage of Slashdotters would understand that a child who isn't challenged by schoolwork could turn into an outcast of some sort or, worse, could refuse to do work altogether. They will think of petty homework and tasks such as character charts and subjects such as The Renaissance as beneath their intelligence. I am going through a personal hell not being able to concentrate in my classes. It's all so uesless to me. Why am I reading this book? Why am I doing this math problem? I'm a writer. I need to write freeform! Anyway, that's basically the mindset of a kid who has given up on school.
And now, for a sig that's a complete copout.
Choline is a naturally occurring nutrient found in egg yolks, milk, nuts, fish, liver and other meats as well as in human breast milk. It is the essential building block for a memory-forming brain chemical called acetylcholine, and it plays a vital role in the formation of cell membranes throughout the body.
No, you don't understand. The white lab mice are already performing experiments on us. In fact, the Earth was created at their behest. We merely form part of the matrix that is meant to determine the question to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Someone needs to read Brave New World
Thousands of parents will be rushing out and getting these supplemets, trying to "help" their unborn children.
10 years from now, a crime wave is going to hit. A bunch of Super intelligent, yet hyperactive and ruthless 9 year olds, with ultra fast reflexes and photographic memory, but total lack of self-control and morals, begins their master plan of taking over the world.
Hey, this may be an interesting Movie plot....
People, I recommend against fooling with the brain until we actually know what we're doing. But Parents are insane anyway (looking into a mirror.)
Well, the article just says that the baby brains are bigger than normal and the neurons seem to be firing faster, but there hasn't been any testing as to whether these guys are any smarter than the average bear (or rat). It does look interesting, but last I checked, in humans there hasn't been any correlation between hat size and IQ. Elephants and blue whales have the biggest brains on the planet, but nobody's calling them the most intellegent creatures in the world.
"May result in cirrhosis and fatty degeneration of the liver, hardening of the arteries, heart problems, high blood pressure, hemorrhaging kidneys."
I'm not so sure I want too much of that stuff in a human subject.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
You can buy choline in almost any of those stores which sell vitamins and nutritional supplements. I live in New York and there is one on every corner.
I read something similar about over a year ago in Science News magazine. Curious and willing to experiment on myself, I bought a jar of choline and started taking one a day.
Here's what I noticed:
First, its it's an intestinal irritant. Its sold in gelatine capusules and if you just swallow one a day, you'll be sorry after a while. I recommend opening the capsules and disolving the choline in something buffered, like milk.
You don't notice anything for a few weeks. And after you stop taking it, the effects persist for weeks.
The stuff is defintely psychoactive. I was constantly locked in deep thought. I finally stopped taking it because I got tired of thinking all the time.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Smarter children thru:
Playing with them, spending time with them.
Giving them toys, then spending time showing them how the toys work. Toys that challenge them to do something are good - like legos - stay away from "Disney type" toys (yeah, I know, it's a blanket definition. You know what I mean)
Teaching them to read - don't wait for fucking kindergarten, teach them yourself. Added benefit of getting to know your kids better. Books. Lots of books. Share the reading with them. Read to them, with them, and for them.
Answer questions. "Why is the sky blue?" Answer it. If you don't know how to, learn why it is. There are a lot of questions that a kid will ask that will require you to to know at least something about it. The hardest part is translation. I asked that question when I was very young, and my old man told me that it's because it's the color that "comes thru"; later I learned that he wasn't bullshitting me. I really appreciated that. He didn't evade the question, just tried to put it in terms I'd understand.
Which leads to
Don't ever, every lie to your your kids. Don't bullshit them. Not about anything. If they ask you about sex, don't evade the question or bullshit them - they'll find some other avenue to educate themselves, and it will likely be something that's not the best way to learn it. You might have to actually think about it to find some way to explain it to them. Do it. You might learn something, too.
Don't ever, EVER try to bullshit your kids, or evade what they are curious about. You will lose their respect and trust when they find out (and they do, eventually, and that's one of the biggest problems in the US right now, but that's a whole 'nother topic).
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
This strikes me as a bit bizarre.
Humanity already has a fairly well-known subgroup of people with brains that have more active neuronal structure, greater capacity for memory, a drastic reduction in age-related decline in cognitive/memorizations kills, and heightened sensory reactions. (Which is all wonderful to have, speaking firsthand.)
The response from the community has not been to embrace us. It has been to force us into painful "treatments" from a young age that train us to "act normal" -- to hide all signs that we're different, including strong natural interests in learning and pain at stimuli that doesn't bother sensory-average humans. There are huge organizations decrying how horrible it is that we exist at all, that actively claim it'd be better if we died of cancer, because we don't act just like "normal" people.
It strikes me as bizarrely hypocritical for one wing of science to be fighting to find a way to prevent/cure my kind, while another is attempting to learn how to intentionally create us. We're already here, we tend to reproduce reliably within families, we just need to be accepted rather than terrorized into hiding our abilities.
As well as high fat, and high a number of other things. Corelation does not equal causation. In this case they isolated choline in making the tests, which is at least proper methodolgy.
Oddly enough, working completely from memory (noncholine "supercharged"), human breast milk is the lowest in protein and fat content of any of these, as I recall ( and it's been some years since I specifically looked into this) about the same percentage as is found in brown rice.
Although remarkable omnivores, human beings are still, deep down, essentially grain eaters. It's the Staff of Life. We require far less protein than most other predatious creatures, like cats, dogs and . . . rats. The myth of "complete protein" comes from a study done on rats in the early 1930s, and debunked in the early thirties as well, although the myth has proven nearly impossible to shake. Once something makes it into print it seems impossible to unprint.
I'm naturally sceptical of animal studies applied to human beings, especially when it comes to nutrition. Our physiology is hardly unique, but it seems to have an odd sort of pliablity that gives strength. Like the reed bending in the wind. Unlike most animals we seem to be able to eat nearly anything, anywhere, and so long as it contains at least minimal amounts of the core substances of life, come out of the deal looking and acting basically the same. I'd say this is a prime reason we were able to spread across the earth. Wherever we went, we found food. A chimpanzee in the desert is hosed. A human will turn to snakes and lizards and do just fine. In the semidesert of a prarie, well, we're surrounded by the Staff of Life.
I'm with Mr. Jones on this one. Until such time as there is some real evidence of effect on human development I entirely hold my judgment, and I'm not inclined to hold my breath over it.
KFG
Certainly true of some students in schools I've taught in. Many intelligent students adopt the time-honoured creed of "if you're truly smart, the smartest thing you can do is not to let them know how smart you are" as a coping device.
I certainly couldn't envisage sitting through the tedium of school again from a student's point of view... and yet, equally, there are a lot of students who fail to realise that studying a little chemistry or maths now gives them the base to take it further should they choose to later in their educational careers. So, ultimately, my advice would be to stick with it... make an effort to find something enjoyable or worthwhile about every task you're set whilst in education, especially if it involves opportunity to gently subvert the task; more teachers have a sense of humour about such things than you might think.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Although remarkable omnivores, human beings are still, deep down, essentially grain eaters.
Oh, horsepucky. Humans haven't been grain eaters until very recently in their evolutionary history, pretty much coinciding with agriculture, and certainly post-dating our domestication of fire. Every try eating raw, unground grain? Bleah. Our teeth aren't made for it either. Fruit eaters, more likely.
I'll buy the rest of it though. Yeah, humans are pretty adaptable. Oh, one other caveat with animal studies, especially rats -- humans can't manufacture their own vitamin C, many other animals can. Human minimum requirement for that was established as somewhat above the minimum needed to prevent scurvy, the optimum dose (as we're coming to realize) is probably an order of magnitude higher than that. (And being fruit-eaters would explain that -- loss of the gene to make vitamin C is no big deal if the diet is high in it. Grain isn't.)
-- Alastair
>Perhaps the time where natural is best is coming to an end.
Also remember, rattlesnake poison and polio are natural. Natural doesn't mean good or bad really.
>The thought is scary that some day I may find myself left in the dust by a choline fed, geneticly altered, super human.
Without getting into the "what is smarts" questions, you can outperform many people if you put some work into it. The kid with the 140 IQ who is addicted to Everquest or thinks learning Klingon is a good way to spend his time will be crushed by the average kid who did his homework that night.
A smarter rat doesn't necessarily correspond to a smarter human. And human intelligence isn't necessarily related to whether the hardware is faster. By analogy, a DSP may run operations faster than a Pentium, but that doesn't make the DSP a better general purpose processor. Or, as another analogy, just upgrading the clock circuit on your motherboard doesn't just make your processor faster--it may also make it flakier. It's plausible that choline is somewhat beneficial as a nutrient during pregnancy. But I wouldn't expect miracles (if choline were that important, women would crave more of it than they do), and there is at least the possibility that an unbalanced intake actually might do some harm.
The Inuit didn't eat much fruit and still didn't get scurvy. So fruit eating doesn't necessarily explain stuff.
From what I see, humans that eat lots of fish (at least before fish got PCBs, mercury etc etc) do very well. Better than those that eat mainly fruit (or grain).
I could argue that humans were essentially fish eaters, but I doubt things are always that simple.
This is the kind of science that can easily get hurt by controversy. The press release doesn't say, but what if these neurological differences translate to significant behavioral differences? The implications for humanity would be for nothing so trite as "the future of learning." How about the disparities between social classes and ethnic groups? Do impoverished mothers get enough choline? Are there ethnic diets that include more or less choline, and is it reflected in their average intellectual abilities? (And how to quantify that is a whole other subject for debate!) These are important questions that may go unanswered if the wrong kinds of people get a chance to put their spin on this. Heaven forbid we find out there's a biological reason why the underpriveleged can't seem to get ahead, even if it's brought on by social conditions rather than something intrinsic. Just watch... if the reasearchers get too close to implying something like that, their funding will get cut and the whole thing will be swept under the rug. Remember how the media roasted Herrnstein and Murray?
And you'll find that fructose is the hardest of the simpler sugars for humans to digest. In fact endurance athletes will avoid it almost entirely since it creates havoc in the intestinal system while under stress. Even while not under stress. Many have had the experience of getting the "shits" from eating too much fruit, and you'll be hard pressed to live on it, with the possible exception of the banana, which ought to be revered.
.a grass. Which is lovely to eat raw.
Starches, such as found in grains and tubers, in the presence of sufficient water, will digest nearly as fast as sugar, which we derive from. .
Oddly enough, we seem to be better tuned to water plants, such as rice, than land plants, where you'll also find fish. Go figure.
No, things aren't simple, and we're essentially omnivores, but If I had to choose one thing to live on entirely it would be fresh, green rice. We seem designed for it. If I could have two things I'd add bananas, which we also seem tuned for, in moderation. Any decent survivalist can tell you you run the risk of starving to death on a diet of fish, even fairly fatty ones like trout and salmon. The Inuit also eat a lot of seal, whale, etc.
However, suppliment starchy plants with fish, insects and the odd rodent or two and you have the nearly perfect human diet, so far as I can determine.
Without turning to fairly advanced tools you'll have a hard time catching and making a meal from a cow.
KFG
What kind of simpleton thinks that more and faster neurons is better, or makes for smarter children? You get those for free with cancer and epilepsy.
Just give your kids meth if you want to boost their IQs. That'll bring the scores up, but do you think that makes them smarter in any meaningful way?
In my rash youth, I tried a number of different drugs, (here are examples of my own stupidity) including drinking a over liter of whiskey one evening, an unknown pill given to me by a guy in a superhero costume at a SF-Con, and a few things that can either enlighten or precipitate psychosis, depending on your personal biology, and whether you believe that any significant insight comes in chemical form.
However stupid I was, I would _never_ have given significant quantities of neurotransmitter precursors in a fetus or a child.Neurons have to communicate to be useful, and there are good indications that a neuron's rate of fire is actually related to information content. Or do you think we can determine intelligence by weighing people's brains?
The brain is marvelously subtle, and incredibly malleable in youth.
You want your kids to be smarter? Teach them. Play with them. Stimulate their senses. Show them the world that rewards you for paying attention to it and thinking about it. If this isn't enough for you, then you can make them smarter by having somebody else raise them.
Anybody who tries this on a human child should be sterilized, preferably with a shotgun.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
So you're tellin me that if kids who are bored with the school system applied themsleves and made themselves more bored, they'd be more successful?
Or to put that in lamens terms, if you're hitting your head on the wall to dround out the pain of getting kicked in the nuts hard by some girl, you should hit your head as hard as possible in order to be successful in this indeavor.
How about taking these bored kids, giving them decent books that
A: Aren't Condesending (Because you can't think of it this way, we do it this way)
B: Aren't Filled with groupthink (So WE do this, and WE do it this way, and WE blah blah blah)
C: Don't Creat an image that's desirable to become that ultamatly makes them lose touch with who they really are(The technician does it this way).
D: Actually has good information and is well written.
Then we surround them by teachers who care and are knowledgable and who don't waste the kids time by forcing them to do month long units on egypt including acting out plays and dances and the building of sugar cube pyramids (which is why they're bored in the first place, you dumbasses aren't doing anything useful in the first place), and let them teach themselves. Bored kids are bored because they are being held back and not being allowed to expand to their true potential, and not being allowed to go in the direction that intrests them the most. Forcing an entire class to, for example, read the same book is an example of this. Give the class a list of suggested books and allowing them to read the books they like is a far more constructive means of teaching them to read. If you snuff the fire out long enough in these kids, it'll go out in a puff of smoke and then it takes years and years to get that fire back, if they ever get it back. The bordem is conditioning them to be irresponsable, because when they go home they'll watch TV and play video games and do something fun and stimulating as supposed to reading an uninteresting book or doing boring homework that takes them 10 minutes to do. Learning is then associated with boardom for the dumber people, and for the rest of them who are smart they realise this is bad but they just don't care because they have no control over it. They can't control the fact that when they read any book, they got bored and nod off. They can't control the fact that doing the questions out of a book brings back the feeling of bring bored, it's human conditioning afterall. Trapped like a rat who has to press a lever that gives it a good jolt to get it's food.
They then fail or close-to-fail their classes because they don't give a shit and are ostrasized for not fallowing the system; by their parents, friends, teachers, everyone. They then turn to other means to reduce their depression of being ostrasized and being called stupid, often turning to drugs or media, music or parties, crime of some sort or boarderline crime like malicious hacking or phreaking. Some of them, rather most of them, get involved with good things like computers or electronics or some other difficult task instead of video games or television and they learn skills that allow them to survive.
Heaven forbid they ever learn what I just said because if they did they'd get really pissed. There's no telling what a pissed teenager who knows what you're upto can do, especially if they are smarter than you are and are well and truely, thoroughly pissed.
You can take your "Educational Career" and shove it. Read some John Taylor Gatto, that'll begin you on to understanding how you're disabling your students. Read some of Joan Batley's articles from www.etherzone.com and you'll realize some of the BS you're teaching.
Candy-Coated Knowledge