Modern Quill |
- Ginkgo Biloba and the LSAT
- 30-Day LSAT Blog - Day 20
- 30-Day LSAT Blog - Day 19
- 30-Day LSAT Blog - Day 18
- 30-Day LSAT Blog - Day 17
- 30-Day LSAT Blog - Day 16
- 30-Day LSAT Blog - Day 15
| Posted: 29 May 2009 12:26 PM PDT  One of the Google hits that brought a reader here was “ginkgo biloba lsat,” so I figured I’d write on this a little bit more. Ginkgo biloba is the name of a tree, also called the Maidenhair tree, that is unique in many ways. For starters, it is most likely that native ginkgo biloba have been extinct for centuries. Cultivated ginkgo biloba has no close living relatives. This makes it a “living fossil:” it the only surviver of a group that was once widespread, but is now only found in the fossil record. Old ginkgo biloba branches form aerial roots whose purposes are unknown. But, if you’re reading this page, you’re probably most interested in ginkgo as a nootropic supplement, that is, a “smart drug” used to enhance memory and concentration. The idea is that it helps stimulate oxygenation and blood circulation to the brain. Unfortunately, like most supplements, ginkgo biloba has not been well-studied: many studies are conflicting, inconclusive, narrow, or industry-sponsored. The best studies indicate that ginkgo biloba did not help people over 75 delay dementia or Alzheimer’s. What promised to be a major, if not definitive study is called GUIDAGE and will be released in 2010: a study of over 2,500 people in France. There was an industy-backed study that found that people in their 60s could benefit from a faster processing time while taking ginkgo biloba, but the study has not been well received. However, I don’t think that most people preparing for the LSAT will fall under the heading of “60-75 year olds worried about dementia.” If you are a 21 year old college undergrad, doing a Logic Game each day will most likely help build your memory performance much better than any tree bark, root, wort, or leaf. However, and here comes the money shot, a British study called “Differential cognitive effects of Ginkgo biloba after acute and chronic treatment in healthy young volunteers” was published in Psychopharmacology in 2004 with this conclusion:
Sustained-attention task? That sounds like LR and RC to me. But I was able to download the fulltext of the document from my library’s Ebsco subscription and give it a read. In the exam, the sustained attention task wasn’t the LSAT, but the PASAT: Spreen and Strauss’s Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task. The task works like this: every 1.6 or 1.2 seconds, you are given a single digit. You then have to add pairs of those digits together. The sustained test lasted for 61 digits, which means it was sustained for 1 minute 12 seconds. So, it isn’t really 6 sections of 35 minutes sustained. Ok, but what about the other area where improvement was found? Pattern recognition?
Huh. Well, parallel-the-reasoning questions might be similar right? Well, maybe. But what about the type of exams that you could expect to find on the LSAT?
Oh darn it. This is one of the areas where no improvement was shown. Perhaps most importantly for someone who is about to sit down and take a grueling 4-hour exam, there was no effect on self-reported mood. So, that being said, there is no reason to believe that any of the functions the LSAT tests will be enhansed by ginkgo biloba. Omniously, the study suggests that the young volunteers might have developed a tolerance for ginkgo biloba, as those who took an acute does (one 120mg dose) saw more benefit than those who had been taking one 120mg dose a day for six weeks. So, if you have a bottle of ginkgo around and both you and your doctor know its safe, it probably won’t hurt to take a 120mg dose before the exam. It probably won’t help either. I was as disappointed as you were, but it just goes to show that LSAT takers and pianists both get to the T-14 and Carnegie Hall the same way: Practice. Or a cab. ⁂ Elsabagh, S., Hartley, D., Ali, O., Williamson, E., & File, S. (2005, May). Differential cognitive effects of Ginkgo biloba after acute and chronic treatment in healthy young volunteers. Psychopharmacology, 179(2), 437-446. Retrieved May 29, 2009, doi:10.1007/s00213-005-2206-6 |
| Posted: 28 May 2009 10:02 PM PDT Ok, I took PrepTest 53 (Dec 2007). I remember December 2007 quite well. This test made me wish I didn’t. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog and tracking my so-called progress, I’m going to leave a blank space so you can pretend you’re writing down your prediction for my score: ______________. Yep, that’s correct. 79%, a 0% change from before. Δ=0. A no-slope linear equation. But what the hey, let’s look at the breakdown.
This is almost identical to the last full-length prep-test I took, which was Test 52 (LR: 84% AR: 60% RC: 81%). What differences where there? Well, unlike Test 52, I banged 53 out one after another, without any sort of breaks. I was locked in my bedroom, and didn’t mosey about the library like Test 52. The TV was on in the next room, which was more distracting than I think words can describe. AND I did Test 53 as a 5-section test. I did an “experimental” section out of one of the very old Preptests. In this case, I picked LR. I did the “experimental” section first, so I wouldn’t get an abnormally high score on the first section due to low fatigue. So, theoretically I scored significantly better due to the adverse conditions I was under. I don’t believe that lie for a second. Well, spank my hamster. The first section was the big disappointment of the exam, so I can’t blame fatigue. I haven’t gone through my errors yet, but this is the kind of frustration that makes me think that I can get a pretty reliable guess at what my score on June 8 will be. I’m really worried that I’ve hit the wall. |
| Posted: 28 May 2009 09:44 PM PDT Ok, I admit I slipped today. This one, unlike Day 18, wasn’t intentional. It was because I misread my schedule (remember that shift I gave away on Day 17? I didn’t). Haukuna matata? |
| Posted: 28 May 2009 09:38 PM PDT
I’ll admit, I cracked today. This was the shift I gave away expressly for LSAT study, but I stared at the page and watched as the letters slowly rearranged themselves to become Virgil’s Eclogues. I don’t speak Latin. But that’s what the LSAT is about, right? Seeing the wires, reading the Matrix? But I had a day I wouldn’t trade for the world: breakfast with Rach, lounging about her house, lounging about my house, and then drinks with her and another old, dear friend. Today was the kind of day I needed to let the knots in my back dissolve, even if I don’t see a score increase because of it. |
| Posted: 28 May 2009 09:28 PM PDT Happy Memorial Day . . . Or, perhaps “Somber Memorial Day?” As it were, I had a full shift today (thankfully, time-and-a-half). However, this really didn’t help me out with the studying. Even if I wanted to start studying at 9 PM, I learned some wonderful news: one of my oldest and closest friends, a soon-to-be-senior at UNH, scored an incredibly prestigious internship at Merck’s Drug Discovery Lab in New Jersey. He’ll be moving down to Rutgers soon, so I had to go see him while I had the chance. Congratulations! |
| Posted: 28 May 2009 09:23 PM PDT The problem with most of my shifts is that they are all second shifts, which makes it difficult to study extended LSAT sittings either before or after. As a result, my studying was a lone LR section today. This is the precise opposite of what I should be doing. |
| Posted: 28 May 2009 09:14 PM PDT Day 14 was, as you could tell, a bit trying. I was very stressed when I went to work and saw my schedule. I took it upon myself to ditch my shift for that coming Tuesday (Day 17). I am trying to get into the zone where I can overcome the effects of mental fatigue during the administration. The stress was just enough for me to slowly work through an LR section during downtime. After I ditched that shift, I started to relax and gel. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from ⁂ Asterism To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Inbox too full?  | |
| If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: ⁂ Asterism, c/o Google, 20 W Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment