My friend Yuki posted on her blog about some TV program she watched all about the ability to concentrate.

One thing that stuck out was that according to the program if you don't concentrate on something very often your ability to concentrate at all gets less and less.

She also said the program said that to concentrate you needed Alpha 2 brainwaves. Alpha 1 being for relaxing and Alpha 3 being when you are nervous. They then gave out 4 things to help you produce Alpha 2 brainwaves.

1) Look at something yellow. They claim looking at yellow produces alpha 2 waves. Maybe I should set my desktop background to something yellow or my window theme?

2) Listen to music with a 116 beats per minute because 116 beats per minute matches Alpha 2 waves. I wonder if it's really 116 beats per minute only or if it's 116+. I generally find that I can concentrate better with a techno, drum and bass, type of music playing that has no lyrics. If there are lyrics I'll get distracted listening to them. If the music is too slow like jazz or classic I'll get lulled to sleep.

3) Drink Ryokucha which is a kind of Japanese green tea (note, there is more than one kind of green Japanese tea. Maccha, Ryokucha, etc). According to the program in the order of effect are ryokucha, coffee, water, orange juice, milk. It wasn't clear to me if those were the top 5 drinks for concentration or if they were just examples with Ryokucha being the best and milk being the worst. It's hard to imagine milk being good for concentration since warm milk is something you drink to go to sleep. The claimed the tannin in the ryokucha was specifically good for your brain.

4) Slap your face 😛 They claimed you see this a lot in sports. Why it works I guess they didn't say although it seems pretty obvious. I know when trying to wake up in front of the mirror I've done it without thinking about it.

She also posted a link to this very interesting page with more info.

That page actually has some contradictory info. Specifically it says caffeine is bad for the brain. That: "<i>Caffeine constricts blood vessels and has been shown to decrease brain activity". That's in contrast to it being the #2 drink above.

It says people with less than 7 hours of sleep a day showed less brain activity.

It mentions diet, too many simple carbs will slow down your brain and that certain kinds of foods help.

It also mentioned the use it or lose it idea. You need to be learning something constantly or it will actually get harder and harder to learn anything.

Probably most interestingly for many it mentions sex as important. If that's the case does that mean I'd be a genious if I had a girlfriend? Anyone out there want to help me find out 😛 Actually, the page only gives info for women in that area.

As far as music, that one claims rap = worst, rock = bad, classical = better than no music. No mention of techno 😛