Saturday, April 11, 2009

The neurogenesis experiment (dark side)

In this blog I am going to conspect my attemps to improve my mind through eating antidepressants. It is rather stupid way to risk, but for me it's a bit of fun. During past weeks my mental progress through training seemed to encounter a wall. After some research and using some logic and intuitive sense i think it's the best way to improve intuition. I use everything there is to improve mind: smart food, running 1-1.5 hours , exercises like standing on head for 1 minute and angle legs up to the wall 5-7 minutes, brainbeats music (I estimated how different tracks downloaded from tpb.org influence my working memory capacity and reaction and mixed best of those that showed cognitive improve; got 4.flac that improves reaction while hearing by 130 percent and memory by 110 percent ), mnemonics (my average result is remembering 91/100 numbers after they were showed with 5 sec interval), nootropics(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylpiracetam),  herbs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleutherococcus), mental exercises(dual n-back ...). But then i realized that all I was doing was logical, and was improving only left hemisphere of my brain. And there comes intuition, right now.

Time to introduce myself. No names, facts only: finished school 11 years , music school, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Institute_of_Physics_and_Technology student, now 5 year student. not a dimwit so my theories are not just dust out of bored mind.
Wall i encountered was that i couldn't get better in my projects , better than common sense.
I estimated my success in playing half-life and chess (of course multiplayer ones). So before neurogenesis experiment i had this kind of fluctuation in chess rating and frag/death ratio peak value was 1634 points in chess and 1.82 kills/deaths in hl2 (played till 90 frags) and stayed there for 2-3 weeks. After and during experiment it reached 1840 and 2.928 respectively. Don't get sceptic because both of these games are dynamic (chess in blitz mode) , there was plenty room left (masters 2789 chess... and those who where killed 1 :10, not cheaters) and it is very intellectual. I don't know what alternative to choose because many of them less complex. So after announcing results the only way to continue is to tell what i used:

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine
2.walnuts
3. running
4.triple n-back

What is the logic of this routine? First three points of this routine result in neurogenesis, which is the process of generating new neuron cells (within brain). Intuition is activated when you are bored, and by artificial holding your breath, last is dominant for me, don't know for the others. when you are bored, neithertheless there is a stream of information goes through, unused neurons, by subconsious means, go into play, storaging facts in thoughts, interpolating them... It is rather vague but it 's my intuitive theory. The power of intuition is correlated with number of neurons. But at first stage of neurogenesis number of your mistakes grow (that's why ordinary tests are not usable in experiment), because new-born neurons are pretty dum. That's why i used triple n-back. This is because neurogenesis is like hiring students on the work, they are lame, not proffesional but their potential is higher than of older ones. And triple n-back is something like institute that immediatly teaches them using all of their powers.

Some words about triple n-back. I think it is better than dual http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_n-back. I am using intuitive sense. There are two kind of people: right-hemisphere dominant and left-hemisphere dominant. LH are very productive when concentrated (every neuron is used in concentration) but limited because they think only in one direction; RH are
most productive when they are relaxed, their style of thought is based on trial and error method and they are "multitasking". Of cource most of people have something average between LH and RH, while mostly they are LH. I'm RH with enchased logic because of education, and during n-back i relax ultimately and don't care as much as i can, letting my fingers do on their own.


Here you see graph of my n-back evolution. First (highlited red) part is when i used logic memory and followed places with eyes, then blue grass - some "search myself" where i changed my style to intuitive , interval from default 3 to 1 sec and alphabet to notes. next back to alphabet (notes emerge in another project) with ordinary life as background, and blue grass is this experiment.
Its routine as summary:

1. get up
2. play 5 chess games internet in order to measure rating
3. play half-life in headphones - I use 3 players on pocket pc: first playing 4.flac, second audiobook in russian, third audiobook in english ; till 90 frags measuring results
4.running(1h) 12.00
5.taking Fluoxetine and walnuts
6.study
7.running 19.00
8. triple n-back: 22.30-23.10, 40 sessions

It took 3 weeks; 7 pills- first week , 4 pills- second week , 3 pills third week

After a week and a half there was a glorious result that I couldn't achieve before for a long time. You can see that in chess the result stayed for long, in half-life after concentration of a-d decreased , degradation appeared. so i think that it is clear that anti-deppresants improve you as long as you take them, result stay not in all cases, but i stopped, not to become living carrot, with some points of my theory confirmed. so that's it for now any questions o discussion mail 4ai@bk.ru. As for me i will continue my research maybe post some months later.