Mental ability or intelligence also known more popularly as brain power, can actually be enhanced in many ways. In our daily lives, we often experience things that clearly show our brains fail us, often at rather inopportune moments in life.

For instance, you start spacing out during an important meeting, and you remember that you’ve shoved your cell-phone into the freezer or other places ! This happens to all of us, let’s face it. Our brains get fogged when put under stress, tension or an seemingly deleterious situation. This tendency gets exaggerated as we age but hold on; it’s time to let go of fatalistic opinions.

By using a few poignant and exercises, we can actually increase our brain power to quite an extent.

It is an inexorably popular (and sometimes true) myth that an old dog cannot be taught new tricks but as for the human brain, scientists have found out that the human brain has a very high adaptability even in old age.

Believe it or not, the human brain has the capability to learn new neural pathways at all times and acquire multifaceted skills, unless there is a serious medical issue on hand. This fascinating phenomenon is known as neuroplasticity, which allows the brain to further cognitive abilities and also enhance learning and memory.

Tips to boost brain power: It is possible

Following are some tips on how to increase brain power:

• Do not compromise on exercise and sleep. Both of these are vital, not only to your muscles but also to your brain. With proper and regular exercise and a healthy diet, the brain has the power to nurture itself and perform better. When you exercise the body you also exercise your brain. Physical exercise increases the oxygen flow to your brain and reduces risks related to memory failure, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

• When you are sleep-deprived your brain gets fatigued and stops functioning the way it should. The abilities of the brain related to creativity and problem-solving techniques and critical thinking run into trouble. When you are over-working and juggling many activities together, it is a recipe for disaster.

• Relaxation is important. The human brain needs ample amount of rest and indulgence into light activities that are fun and involves less labour to function well. That is why it is important to have some time out with friends and involve yourself in light talk and fun. It helps unwind the tangles in the brain and de-stress. Research shows that meaningful relationships stimulate the brain. Also, people who have an active social life are less likely to suffer from memory-related issues.

• Someone rightly said that laughter is the best medicine. Indulging in humour is a very effective way to stimulate the proper functioning of the brain. Unlike emotional responses that are limited to certain specific areas in the brain, laughter affects multiple regions across the brain. Listening to jokes and working on punch lines helps the brain to engage in creativity and thus aids learning.

Foods that are proven to be aiding brain development must be given importance to in your daily meal-plans. Foods with omega3 fats, green tea, fruits and green vegetables are important to not only your body but also your brain. Limit the intake of saturated fats and alcohol.

Ever imagined what would life be like if you were blessed with impeccable memory? If this was to be true, then you would remember everything that has been taken-in as input from the sensory organs. The thought itself is overwhelming. But in reality, brain sorts all the information into two kinds of memories – short term memory and long term memory. Information that is perceived to be irrelevant is discarded. Short term memory helps us with information that we need right now and discards it once used. On the other hand long term memory stores information to be used in the long run or for life.

We tend to collect information through nerve cells of sensory organs and store it in the form of memories. This information flows through nerve cells in the form of electrical impulses, thereby activating the neurotransmitters. Further, neurotransmitters transmit information to nerve cells through neural pathways and move it in line with neurons. If we use this information immediately, neurons categorize this information as short term memories. All the information is stored and this is proportional to the size of the brain. Strength of the neural pathways determines our ability to recollect information.

A recent research on object-based attention propounded that human brain is capable of filtering relevant pieces of information from heaps of data. For instance, if we direct the brain to ventilate a house, it would focus on opening the door and windows of the house and not of neighboring houses.  A recent research suggests that human brain segregates importance information and stores it in our memory.

Perception can defined as our ability to see, hear or acknowledge things in our surroundings with the help of sensory organs, whereas memory refers to brains ability to store information and recollect when needed. The concepts of memory and perception have been studied and investigated separately. Both the skills of the brain are considered to be important in dealing with psychiatric illnesses amongst humans. Our responsiveness to external stimuli is dependent upon these two factors.

We are known to auto-extend attention to the entire object while dealing with a part of it. We tried to study the tendency of human brain to filter relevant information from the whole set. For instance, in the above experiment the brain would focus on both doors as well windows of that particular house in order to ventilate it. The point to be understood here is, the brain tries to keep track of both the objects. These objects would be registered in the short-term memory of the brain. Irrelevant objects like neighbors houses would be filtered by the brain.

Medical experts used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to tap the neuronal activity of the brain to examine the results of this experiment physiologically. A lot of activity has been observed in the cerebral cortex of the brain. The sole purpose of the experiment was to tap the positioning of relevant and irrelevant objects during the filtering process.  A remarkable finding of the experiment is that a lot of activity was observed in that region of the brain that mainly deals with perception. This clearly indicates that we can attribute several important functions of human cognition to our perception.

Knowledge is gathering factual information we obtain through research, observation, study or investigation. Awareness about things or having information about certain things that may be of interest to us and society can be termed as knowledge.

Whereas wisdom refers to our capability to comprehend whether the knowledge acquired is correct, enduring and applicable to our lives. It refers to our propensity to apply the knowledge to evaluate the worth of things around us that may have an impact of our lives. It is deeper that just being aware about factual information.

Insight refers to the deepest level of perception that allows us to differentiate between factual information and wisdom. It can relate to both knowledge as well as wisdom. It refers to our capacity to learn the very nature of knowledge and crux of wisdom. It is about truly knowing the significance of our life and being aware about the bigger picture pertaining to things that matter. To simplify this further, knowledge can be called as set of information; wisdom can be referred to as understanding and ability to apply that knowledge whereas insight is the level of awareness about the essence of both knowledge and wisdom.

Unfortunately, we can obtain factual information that is knowledge about things but might not be able to see the underlying wisdom. Or we may have the wisdom but still may not be able to understand its deeper significance.

Following are key points highlighting the difference between knowledge, wisdom and insights. For someone who is considering going for a trek may do following:

• Measuring length of path of the desert can be an example of knowledge
• Making provisions for food and water can be an example of wisdom
• Whereas thinking of setting up a portable lemonade stand can be an example of insight

Knowledge is being aware about your finances, keeping track of your savings, expenditure and budgeting. Wisdom is being about the significance that money holds in your life and how does it help in molding your future. Whereas insight is looking at the bigger picture and thinking at macro level, that money is just a tool, its usefulness and worth would be determined by its application.

For a painter, knowledge can be defined as his skill to paint, that he uses to make a living. His capacity to use painting to express his passion for art is his wisdom along with his understanding that art is a medium of communication that touches the lives of its enthusiasts. Insight can be related to his perception of art with things around him and ability to express the essence of art with the help of things around him.

To summarize, knowledge, wisdom and insights all three concepts hold an important place in our lives. Differentiating these concepts might seem daunting but simply being clear in our mind about its application can help us in understanding the true worth of these concepts. We need to learn to distill information and make a judgment based on the facts. We also need to learn about its practical application in our lives.