Want to improve your brain? Toss your BlackBerry and start smoking dope, implies a study that got some media attention this week (surprise, surprise).

An excerpt from the Toronto Star article:

Brad Simms sends and receives more than 50 text messages and 100 emails every day. He thinks his BlackBerry has sharpened his mental performance. He now has more free time to go to the gym.

And Simms laughs off a study that suggests people like him are losing their smarts — indeed, more so than if they smoked pot — because of the amount of time they spend sending electronic messages.

The University of London study found constant emailing and text messaging reduces mentality capability by an average of 10 points on an I.Q. test — five points for women and 15 for men.

"We tested office workers under `quiet' conditions, and then under `loud' conditions, which allowed them to access their email and text messages," said Glenn Wilson, a psychology professor at the University of London and author of the Hewlett-Packard-sponsored study. "The performance on I.Q. tests dropped by 10 points."

That's the same effect as missing a night's sleep, Wilson said. Smoking cannabis, by comparison, decreases mental capability by four points.

"This is a very real and widespread phenomenon," he said. "We have found that info-mania, if unchecked, will damage a worker's performance by reducing their mental sharpness."