Brain Science

Why go through trouble of taking an IQ test when you've got chemistry at your disposal? Researchers at England's John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford, report that our brain's pH--how acidic or alkaline it is--might be a clue to our intelligence.

Using a technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), researchers examined the brains of 42 British schoolboys. Just as its close cousin MRI creates vivid images of a person's internal anatomy, MRS lets doctors study an organ's chemistry. When the British scientists compared the lads' IQ scores with their MRS results, they uncovered an intriguing relationship: the smarter the boy, the more alkaline his brain. Although the relationship between alkalinity and aptitude didn't hold for every aspect of intelligence, verbal skills and reading comprehension seemed especially linked to pH, the Radcliffe team reports in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

The pH of the smart and not-so-smart boys' brains only varied between 7.0 and 7.1--not quite as dramatic a difference as that between maple syrup (pH: 6.8) and stomach acid (pH: 2), to choose two random examples. But even within this narrow range, the researchers suggest' a more alkaline brain might allow nerve impulses to move faster, producing a quicker mind in every sense. The finding raises the intriguing question of whether we might one day be able to turbo charge our brain by altering its pH. But would-be Mensa members take note: So far there's no hard evidence that boosting the speed of our neurons results in increased smarts, or that we can raise our brain's pH by eating particular foods.

Edited by Peter Doskoch