Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (15 page)

The words are sent farther forward to the hearing area in the auditory cortex, where they can be subvocalized, plus along a separate path to Broca’s area, where speech production is controlled for saying words aloud.

At the same time the words are also sent down into the center of the brain to the amygdala, where the emotional content is determined. It may not seem like emotions would affect reading, but memories are more likely to stick if they are combined with emotion. This is one reason that having an interest in a subject makes it easier to remember; being interested in something activates the powerful emotion of pleasure.

But there’s much more to reading than just recognizing words. Real meaning only comes from the way the words are
combined
, and in that one fact lies the real secret to reading faster…

Think Fast

Quick! Memorize the following letters:

U P S I R S F B I J F K N A S A N A T O

Not done yet? Fine. Give up then, because it really does take too long.

But let’s make it easier by grouping the same string of letters like this:

UPSI RSFB IJF KNA SAN ATO

Easier, right? Just six little “words” to remember. Nope. Still too hard and still takes too much time.

Well, what if we group the letters like this:

UPS IRS FBI JFK NASA NATO

Wow, what a difference! The letters still make up six words, but these words are so much easier to remember than the previous ones. They’re made up of the same letters, in the same order, and in the same number of “words,” but only the grouping is different. Now they’re grouped into “thought-units,” with each thought-unit representing a meaningful chunk of information.

This is the key to moving more information through your brain faster: parceling the information into larger packages. Reading and remembering takes a lot of thinking, and thinking takes time. You can’t really make those neurons fire any faster than they are capable; as smart as they are, they still have certain physical limits.

I don’t mean that neurons are slow, but it just takes an awful lot of firing on their part to accomplish all the work they have to do as they sort and store information. When they’re resting, neurons fire about twenty-five times per second. When they’re active, that speed increases to around four hundred times per second. And when they’re concentrating really hard on something, they max out at about one thousand firings per second. So yes, you
can
think faster, but there is still a maximum speed limit.

There are other limits, too. Besides processing speed, our conscious minds can only hold about seven pieces of information at a time; and at normal reading speeds, these pieces only have about half a second before the next piece comes through.

But fortunately there is a clever way to bypass both of these limitations. In fact, this solution is a special talent that, in comparison to all other creatures, puts humans at the head of the pack in the thinking department. Although humans aren’t well known for physical strength, speed, or any other particularly powerful physical abilities, they do excel at
consciousness
. Human consciousness gives rise to an amazing ability to handle novel and complex information, which allows humans to invent new solutions to problems and to make accurate predictions about the future.

This consciousness is not located throughout the whole brain, but resides primarily in the prefrontal cortex. This is where you pay attention. This is where the real “you” lives.

This prefrontal cortex is the erasable whiteboard of the brain; here, information is scribbled temporarily while the consciousness decides what to do with it. Information constantly and rapidly flows into this area from the senses and is quickly organized, filtered, and chunked together into larger ideas. And it has to accomplish all this even though it only has room to hold about seven pieces of information at a time.

But the conscious mind uses a clever trick to keep up with all this information. Although it is limited to handling only about seven items at a time, each of these items can be immensely complex. Each of these seven items can be piled high with information, similar to the way we pile food on our plates at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Chunking of information into larger more complex ideas makes the most of each conceptual idea before it is sent on to memory.

The key to this process of filtering and combining information is the brain’s fascination with
patterns
and
hidden structures
. These patterns allow ideas and concepts to be assembled into massively complex pyramids of information where each thought is attached to many layers of underlying meaning and associations.

This hunger for patterns is unstoppable. We can’t help seeing patterns in everything. The result is more than just faster thinking, but also richer experiences. By filtering and combining information into larger patterns, we create the complex context of our consciousness. We don’t just see, learn, and remember information—we
understand
it conceptually. To conceptualize information is to become truly aware of it, and what it means to us.

The process of chunking information into conceptual patterns is not just a neat trick for thinking and reading faster—the more we chunk information into concepts, the more truly conscious we become.

Reading Evolution

As amazing as the human mind is, it wasn’t specifically designed for the modern world. Our minds evolved and developed over a period of time continually adapting to our changing needs.

So just like language, our minds are just what we ended up with. Our brains weren’t designed with reading in mind. Our early hominid ancestors needed to know things like where food and resources were, the route home, and which plants were edible or poisonous.

To recognize these types of things, they had to be very good at visual imagery, but they didn’t have to remember things like lists of facts, or names, dates, and numbers. They also didn’t need to spend much time thinking about abstract ideas—the kinds with no visual associations.

Since reading was only developed a few thousand years ago, it certainly hasn’t given our brains enough time for any physical adaptation. In essence, we are still reading with prehistoric brains, yet somehow there are fixed circuitries of the human brain that seem perfectly attuned to recognizing the printed word.

What appears to have happened is that somehow humans have very effectively reassigned portions of their brains to this new task. In other words, reading looks to be just a patch onto an existing, more primitive brain. But even though this reassignment of brain areas is just a makeshift adaptation, our reading skills have continued on a constant path of improvement and sophistication. They have progressed from recognizing cave pictures to rapidly consuming vast amounts of data from a continuous flow of complex information.

This has been an incredible mental restructuring. A caveman has learned to read. If the brain developed this amazing skill in such a short time, then once again, it makes one wonder how we could imagine that our current reading skill is the “finished” product.

Practice Exercise #8

For the next reading exercise, imagine how your inner caveman brain is going to understand this. This guy has been around way longer than those shiny, brand new reading skills—and he prefers to think in pictures! So make sure to give him something that will keep his attention by forming visual images that will be interesting to the whole brain.

One thing you could try if you are having difficulty thinking in pictures as you read is doodling the phrases. To prompt your mind to think visually, try this exercise. Get a sheet of paper and make very quick sketches of what each phrase means to you. These can be absolutely simplistic and maybe only meaningful to you. Don’t take a lot of time, just jot down whatever comes to mind, be it an actual pictorial view, a metaphorical view, or a symbolic view. These aren’t pieces of art and should be created as quickly as possible—just simple stick figures will do. Think of it as speed
Pictionary
.

Don’t be concerned at all about what your doodles look like; just as our internal singing voice is often better than what comes out of our mouths, our right brains will internally take care of the real artwork much better than we can draw. The point is only to give you some practice in seeing ideas as images and concepts, which can help wake up the visual right brain.

When you’re ready, begin reading the first thousand words of

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Mr. Utterson
the lawyer
was a man
of a rugged countenance,
that was never lighted
by a smile;
cold,
scanty
and embarrassed
in discourse;
backward in sentiment;
lean,
long,
dusty,
dreary,
and yet somehow
lovable.
At friendly meetings,
and when the wine
was to his taste,
something eminently human
beaconed from his eye;
something indeed
which never found its way
into his talk,
but which spoke
not only
in these silent symbols
of the
after-dinner face,
but more often
and loudly in
the acts of his life.
He was austere
with himself;
drank gin
when he was alone,
to mortify
a taste for vintages;
and though
he enjoyed
the theatre,
had not crossed
the doors of one
for twenty years.
But he had
an approved tolerance
for others;
sometimes wondering,
almost with envy,
at the high pressure
of spirits involved
in their misdeeds;
and in any extremity
inclined to help
rather than
to reprove.

“I incline
to Cain’s heresy,”
he used to say quaintly:
“I let my brother
go to the devil
in his own way.”
In this character,
it was frequently
his fortune
to be the last
reputable acquaintance
and the last
good influence
in the lives
of down-going men.
And to such as these,
so long as they came
about his chambers,
he never marked
a shade of change
in his demeanor.

No doubt the feat
was easy to Mr. Utterson;
for he was
undemonstrative
at the best,
and even his friendship
seemed to be founded
in a similar catholicity
of good-nature.
It is the mark
of a modest man
to accept
his friendly circle
ready-made
from the hands
of opportunity;
and that was
the lawyer’s way.
His friends were those
of his own blood
or those whom
he had known
the longest;
his affections,
like ivy,
were the growth of time,
they implied no aptness
in the object.
Hence,
no doubt,
the bond that united him
to Mr. Richard Enfield,
his distant kinsman,
the well-known
man about town.
It was a nut
to crack for many,
what these two
could see
in each other,
or what subject
they could find
in common.
It was reported by those
who encountered them
in their Sunday walks,
that they said nothing,
looked singularly dull,
and would hail
with obvious relief
the appearance
of a friend.
For all that,
the two men
put the greatest store
by these excursions,
counted them
the chief jewel
of each week,
and not only set aside
occasions of pleasure,
but even resisted
the calls of business,
that they might
enjoy them uninterrupted.