Increasing NGF in the brain
02 May 2004
This fascinates me because it would seem to present a way of permanently increasing one's intelligence. Creating more neurons with more connections to one another would seem like a good way to increase intelligence and comprehension. Of course I cannot make the logical jump from increased NGF to increased brain size/neurons without some corroboration. This could very well prove ineffective for healthy users to increase the natural amount of NGF found in the brain, either way though I'd like to know. Thanks.
Cyto 02 May 2004
What are the implications of increasing the amount of human Nerve Growth Factor in the brain? Does it repair and/or creates new neurons within the brain?
Neurotrophic factors eh? Well the group of these are pigment derived neurotrophic factor, brain derived neurotrophic factor, glial derived neurotrophic factor, and we could include parasite derived neurotrophic factor so we will. Overall these factors play a major part in persistence of the life of a neuron - up-regulating survival pathways such as Akt, suppression of JNK, up-regulation of Nuclear factor kappa B. All of them lead to suppression of apoptic mechanisms. If you are looking for something that would attempt to increase neurons try to purify some leukemia inhibitor factor, which seems to be up-regulated in surrounding neurons when a local neuron has apoptized and a replacement would occur. So overall this is the persistence of memory, I know that exercise can up-regulate BDNF Webpage and thus lead to a persistence of memory.
02 May 2004
ocsrazor 02 May 2004
Even though children have more, it is still being released in very specific areas and in very small amounts. To use neurotrophic factors to do anything constructive will require quite a bit of research on how and when they change the structure of a neural network.
Best,
Peter
Edited by ocsrazor, 03 May 2004 - 02:20 AM.
03 May 2004
Stem cells aren't neurons though, and to increase nueritic growth as you put it without a necessarily increasing the amount of neurons by any significant amount could still mean a relative boost in intelligence. I know this is a rather large jump from the physical level, the brain structure, to the intangible intelligence but I'm just thinking outloud.
One thing I do agree on however is that more research is definitely needed. For instance the genes that control the brain ability to grow infinitely beyond it's hardwired phsyical limit might be the barrier that we must defeat. Mimicing the genes which function to improve memory and cognition and yet are only in a minority of very intelligent people, could allow a wider spectrum of society to experience genius like intelligence and photographic memory. The medications which could serve this purpose might ultimately provide us with that higher level of intelligence.
ocsrazor 03 May 2004
You are absolutely right to think that additional cells will do very little to increase intelligence in a normal brain. The human brain is at maximum packing density for cell bodies, there really isn't any room for large increases in the number of cells.
There is lots of research to show that mammals with branchier (more axons and dendrites) brains are more intelligent, so on a surface level the idea that wholesale increasing their outgrowth might increase intelligence seems to be valid - BUT - what I was getting at above is that plasticity (how much structures are rearranged during learning) is a very tightly regulated process in the human brain, so you would have to be extremely careful how you alter it.
There are people who already have much higher capacity for intelligence in very specific domains and/or photographic memory. They are also autistic - with extreme social and communication disorders. This is tightly correlated with structural changes in the axons and dendrites and is likely because these people's brains are more able to make rapid structural changes than normal people. This also puts them at a distinct disadvantage for social and communications processing which require slow network changes.
The lesson being, large scale alteration of genetics is a very tricky game, and is not a technically easy route to enhancing intelligence (this is not the route I would predict that will provide the most effective bang for buck in research dollars).
Best,
Peter
saddlesblazing 03 Dec 2008
Hi Cosmos,
You are absolutely right to think that additional cells will do very little to increase intelligence in a normal brain. The human brain is at maximum packing density for cell bodies, there really isn't any room for large increases in the number of cells.
There is lots of research to show that mammals with branchier (more axons and dendrites) brains are more intelligent, so on a surface level the idea that wholesale increasing their outgrowth might increase intelligence seems to be valid - BUT - what I was getting at above is that plasticity (how much structures are rearranged during learning) is a very tightly regulated process in the human brain, so you would have to be extremely careful how you alter it.
There are people who already have much higher capacity for intelligence in very specific domains and/or photographic memory. They are also autistic - with extreme social and communication disorders. This is tightly correlated with structural changes in the axons and dendrites and is likely because these people's brains are more able to make rapid structural changes than normal people. This also puts them at a distinct disadvantage for social and communications processing which require slow network changes.
The lesson being, large scale alteration of genetics is a very tricky game, and is not a technically easy route to enhancing intelligence (this is not the route I would predict that will provide the most effective bang for buck in research dollars).
Best,
Peter
I know this is an old post, but you seem pretty knowledgeable so I figured I would ask anyway. You mentioned that increasing NGF, and therefore altering genetics is not the easiest way to increase intelligence. What do you think would be the easiest way and hence the best target for research?
desperate788 04 Dec 2008
saddlesblazing 09 Dec 2008
so what to do to increase ngf in brain, a quick search didn't come up with an satisfactory answer.
I've read that Idebenone increases NGF.
Nate-2004 06 Mar 2018
Sauna and endurance runs tend to produce the most BDNF according to some studies. I've got the links somewhere but Google is your friend on this one.