Alcoholics have smaller brain volumes, probably due to the toxic effects of ethanol that causes the brain to shrink more with aging - but a new study shows that the brains of children of alcohol-dependent parents have reduced intracranial volume before they even take a drink.

The study by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the first to demonstrate that for children of alcoholics, brain size is affected before the onset of alcohol dependence.

Intracranial volume, or ICV, was found to be about 4 percent smaller in adult children of alcoholic parents than in adults who had no family history of alcoholism. IQ scores in alcoholic individuals whose parents were also alcoholic were found to average 5.7 points lower than in alcoholics whose parents were not alcohol-dependent.

The authors note that a possible implication of their findings is that the increased risk for alcoholism among children of alcoholics may be due to a genetic or environmental effect, or both, related to reduced brain growth.

“Although ICV is known to be influenced primarily by genetic factors,” says Dr. Daniel Hommer, senior author of the study,“many studies have found that living in an enriched environment promotes central nervous system growth and development. It seems likely that alcoholics, in general, are raised in less than optimal environments and thus that genetics and environment both contribute to the smaller ICV observed in family history positive alcoholics.”

Study Finds Reduced Brain Growth in Alcoholics with Family Drinking History

If you believe you can get smarter, you will. Studies have previously shown that IQ is not fixed but can be influenced by many factors. Home environment, community and education all affect IQ.

Findings of a study on how students views of their intelligence affected their math grades showed that those who believed that intelligence can be developed did in fact improve their math performance.

One study monitored 12 year olds over two years of school. The students who believed that their intelligence could be expanded outperformed those who believed that intelligence is fixed. Over the two years, the difference in performance levels widened, even though both groups had started out on an equal achievement level.

A second study concentrated on students whose math grades were declining. One group was taught that intelligence is not fixed, but expandable. Another group was not told that intelligence could be developed. Both groups went through an 8-session workshop on study skills. The students who were taught that their intelligence could be expanded reversed the decline in their grades in contrast to the second group, whose math grades continued on a downward slope.

Researchers believe that when students believe they are capable of achieving more, they concentrate more on learning and the power of their own effort. The results of the studies indicate that what students believe about intelligence can affect their academic progress and motivation.

The two studies were conducted by researchers at Columbia University and Stanford University, and are published in the January/February 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

Society for Research in Child Development

It seems that everybody poses a trick these days to keep a brain from aging or to make it more intelligent in spite of age.

And some anti-age brain ideas are well worth the read. Scott Adam’s post… Aging Brains comments over at Dilbert.Blog starts this way…

“They say you get smarter every day that you’re alive until some tipping point. After that, because your brain starts to rot with age, you get dumber every day. I wonder if I’ll know when it happens. That would be a bad day. “Something feels different today. I wonder what…uh-oh.”

People have their own way of dealing with secrets the brain still refuses to yield. Scott decided to make a deal with his brain… “To compensate for my inevitable mental decline I am already doing triage on entire categories of my memory. Anything I don’t need will be purged to make room for new stuff. I already got rid of the category I call “who wore what.” If I see you in the gym wearing a full chicken outfit I will remember that as “saw you working out.” Luckily I’m male, so it didn’t take much work to purge that category.”

It’s worth a look at Scott’s faithful crowd of 336 respondents also, for a few tips on intelligence. Not all comments here hold water with researchers – and many lack currency from cognitive fields – but Scott’s readers lay into who’s smart and they show where today’s genius hangs out, too.

One reader, for instance, pointed blog readers to join the Triple Nine Society – which is a group that welcomes people who test in the 99.9th percentile in one of several adult standardized tests.

This self-proclaimed smart society, promises its members … “Opportunities for social contact include the annual meeting and local meetings in some areas, an email discussion list, and real-time chat channels.” What do you think?

I used to write a regular column for Mensa … a similar self-named smart group’s magazine. You likely have your own ideas about self- publicized smart circles, but I see one key problem.

These intelligence elite, who welcome the top 1% of all intelligent people, seem unaware that the definition for intelligence has changed. Those people once named as smartest – more often than not sport far less intelligence than previously thought. Oops….

In the past era, with amazing technology we can test people’s acumen from multiple intelligences. We tend to name people smarter because they solve problems and create products that lead to innovation in several intelligences and with evident results that are measurable beyond any classroom or textbook.

So, to keep up with who’s really smarter, intelligence clubs such as Mensa and Triple Nine Society, will want to change their question.

Instead of asking prospective members …. How smart are you? (which implies a number score in response, and lacks current accuracy) they’ll need to ask the more relevant question … How are you smart? (which expects multiple ways of using knowledge to solve problems and create solutions that show evidence of real intelligence applied).

So, with this new definition … who’s smart in your mind? Better still… “How are you smart?”