RESHAPE YOUR BRAIN
Why all you need is some paper to put together a healthier mental state
When Erik Demaine was seven years old, he climbed into his newly divorced dad’s car and watched their home town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, recede in the rear-view mirror. It was the beginning of a four-year road trip across North America, which ended in 1993 when father and son returned to allow Erik, still just 12, to take his place at Dalhousie University to study maths and computer science. By 20, he was the youngest ever professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research area that brought him such early success – and joy – was origami.
Not all of us can be a prodigy like Demaine, who in 2003 was awarded the Macarthur “Genius Grant”. But origami could take us a small step closer. Research at Rostov State University in Russia linked the ancient Japanese practice of paper-folding to a sharpening of test subjects’ motor, intellectual and creative abilities. The study’s authors put this down to an increase in interaction between test subjects’ brain hemispheres, which separate research* suggests can improve the quality of ideas we have. Good news if you thought all paperwork was by definition mind-numbing.
Origami also helps to regulate your mood. According to neuroscientist Kelly Lambert of the University of Richmond, Virginia, everyday dextrous activity can limit the release of stress hormones in your brain. Working with your hands for a tangible reward – in origami’s case, your perfectly folded paper crane, say – can re-establish your sense of control over your environment. This triggers what Lambert calls a “behaviourceutical” effect: a positive change in your neurochemistry that is potentially as significant as the effects of medication.
“I work on anything I consider fun,” Demaine said in 2005, sitting in an office that the New York Times described as resembling a “geometric playpen”. Most of us haven’t done any origami since primary school, and we’ve let ourselves wander into an adult life of offices and abstract goals. But for a clearer, healthier mind, perhaps it’s time we returned to the fold.