It feels harder to think when your mind鈥檚 in a minor funk (Image: Oliver Charles/Getty)
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CHEER up, it might make you cleverer. We all have days when our brain goes at a snail鈥檚 pace, and IQ really does fluctuate. If we鈥檙e healthy, what鈥檚 going on?
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Sophie von Stumm at Goldsmiths, University of London, wondered if mood could be the brain鈥檚 dimmer switch. 鈥淥n bad mood days, we tend to feel that our brains are lame and work is particularly challenging,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut scientists still don鈥檛 really know if our brains work better when we are happy.鈥�
Over five days, her team asked 98 volunteers to assess their mood and tested their short-term memory, working memory and processing speed.
Bad mood didn鈥檛 correlate with worse cognitive performance. But when people reported feeling positive, von Stumm saw a modest boost in their processing speed. It could be that the impact of a bad mood failed to show up because its effects are only seen at the extremes 鈥� a minor funk may not be sufficient, she says.
Her team have just launched an app called to test the links between mood and IQ outside the lab, which more than 11,000 people have downloaded so far.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淗appy days make you smarter鈥�