When I was 13 I learned how quickly our brains can be trained. We were all required to take a class called Reading Communications, and the classroom contained a tool called a tachistoscope.

“Tachis” is from the Greek, for speed, and “scope” indicates viewing. Sure enough, the tachistoscope was a projector that could flash an image on a screen for a precise amount of time.

As I remember it, we worked with strings of digits. I think the teacher started us with something like a row of 6 numbers, on the screen for half a second. Here’s the amazing thing: within a few days everyone in class, with no exception, improved markedly.

I think we went from those first slides to grabbing a row of 10 numbers in less than a tenth of a second. I’m not sure about the exact string length and time and certainly there was a range of skill among the students in the class, but we all improved, quite a bit and quickly.

I don’t know about the rest of the class, but I retained the improvement. Especially compared to my friends, and even though my eyesight isn’t good, I can grab visuals that appear briefly.

This reminds me of another time I saw fast brain training. I think I was 51. I was at Rancho La Puerta with two girlfriends, and Marita and I enrolled in a 5-day class called Alignment, Balance & Coordination (ABC). We were two of about 15 women, and the students ranged in age from late 40s to mid-80s. We did things like walk on foam blocks, tread a straight line, stand on one foot. We played with hula hoops and made a path of wedges. We were advised to turn our palms forward when we walk, and to alternate which foot we stand on with each quad-pacing buzz of our electric toothbrushes.

It sounds like we were training our bodies but of course we were really exercising our minds. And every one of us showed rapid, remarkable, maybe permanent improvement.

It was like the tachistoscopic training. In both classes, it felt like a switch was flipped in us, letting everyone step up a level in his or her game. It makes me wonder, it makes me ponder, what other switches may exist.