Medical Health Care Provider

In a lot of ways, your overall intelligence is fairly well established before you ever have anything to do with it. Family genetics, your diet as an infant, vaccinations, illnesses during childhood, your preschool education, even the types of punishment your parents chose to dish out—there are studies linking all these factors and hundreds more to your eventual smarts as an adult. But just as you can work hard in the gym and change your diet to overcome bad physical genetics, you can also train your brain to far exceed its initial intellectual potential and keep your mind sharp. “It may not be a muscle, but you can train your brain just like you would your biceps to perform at a significantly higher level,” says neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of the University of California San Francisco, and the creator of brainhq.com, a site designed specifically for getting your brain into better shape.