Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance (14 page)

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Authors: Richard Restak

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BOOK: Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance
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Next, in a test of lexical (letter) fluency, recite within one minute as many words as you can starting with the letters
c,
followed by
f,
and then
n.
The words cannot be the names of people, places, or numbers, and they cannot be variations of the same word, e.g.,
work, worked, working.
Notice that both the category and the letter-generating fluency tests rely on language. They also activate the left frontal lobe. Anytime you want to “turn on” your left frontal lobe and enhance your working-memory abilities, you can do so by performing one of these exercises. One caveat: As you practice these exercises, you may begin to repeat earlier sequences. Counter this by restricting or shifting the categories (farm animals or jungle animals or animals found in rain forests or savannas). This exercises not only your working memory but also general memory.
The
second exercise for working memory
involves not words but designs. It activates an entirely different part of the brain: the right hemisphere, especially the right frontal and parietal lobes. Within four minutes draw as many novel (original) abstract designs as you can. The figures cannot be nameable (triangles, squares) and each one can appear only once. Page 124 shows a sample containing fifteen novel designs.
Here is another test of design fluency. Page 125 shows thirty-five squares with five dots arranged within each square. The placement of the dots within each square is identical. Photocopy the page so that you can take the test on multiple occasions. Now, using a copy, make within one minute a different design in each square by connecting the dots using only four straight lines. Each line must touch at least one other line at a dot. Five examples are drawn. It isn’t necessary for the lines to include all the dots. But each arrangement must be original—repetitions don’t count, just as word repetitions didn’t count in the word fluency tests. Initially you can expect to create between eight and ten original designs. With further practice you should be able to double that.
Example: healthy performance
Novelty Score = 15
Example: healthy performance
Novelty Score = 15
Now turn to page 126, which shows thirty-five squares, each containing five empty and five filled dots. Create original nonrepetitive designs using only four lines and alternating between empty dots and filled dots. You can start from either a filled or empty dot, but be sure to alternate them. Five examples are given. Try not to look at the previous designs as you make each new design. Check carefully at the end for repetitions or the use of five lines instead of four.
In order for you to challenge your nonverbal working memory, create on a blank sheet of paper with a ruler and a pencil a design of thirty-five empty squares arranged in a grid as on pages 125 and 126. By photocopying your grid you can then create your own configurations of dot patterns.
The goal in each of the fluency tests is to activate the frontal executive circuits (primarily located in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex). Each of the exercises described does this. Just be sure to perform nonverbal design exercises as well as verbal exercises.
Look for opportunities to incorporate working-memory exercises into your everyday routine. For example, whenever you’re inclined to divide an activity into several segments, try doing them simultaneously as with the coin-counting exercise. When reading the paper, select three stories from page one and read the page-one content of all three of them before turning to the continuations on the back pages. That way you will be challenging your frontal lobes to keep two stories in working memory while you’re reading one of the three. When you’re finished, test your ability to remember specific names and facts from each of the stories.
Recreational games such as dominoes and bridge are exceptionally effective at boosting working memory. In one study, comparing fifty bridge players with nonplayers, all between the ages of fifty-five and ninety-one, the players consistently outperformed the nonplayers on tests of working memory and reasoning. Poker is probably just as effective, as is blackjack, especially when playing with a limited number of decks. If you really want to improve your working memory, learn to card count. This isn’t overly difficult when only one deck is in use (the reason the blackjack dealers in casinos use multiple decks).
A highly recommended free website that offers programs for improving working memory is found at
www.memorise.org/memoryGym.htm
.
Expand Your Vocabulary
Although philosophers and most recently cognitive scientists continue to debate whether thoughts can exist without words and language, no one disagrees that words provide new and more nuanced ways of looking at everyday objects and experiences.
Learning new words not only enriches one’s understanding of the world but also enhances several brain functions. Whenever you encounter a new word, you engage the language centers located principally in the left hemisphere; the word is then worked on by the prefrontal lobes and maintained in working memory. After continued study and thinking about it, the word becomes a component of your permanent vocabulary and is stored in long-term memory.
As part of your efforts to improve brain function, learn a new word each day. Keep a record of the new words you learn by entering them in a dedicated word journal. I started this exercise at twelve years of age in response to an intriguing and appealing proposal by my father. He told me that on certain days he would place a dollar inside the front flap of the dictionary. Since I couldn’t be certain which days he would do this, he suggested that I check the dictionary every day and, dollar or no dollar, learn a new word each day. “Every day a new word will be your reward and on some days you will be doubly rewarded,” he told me. Thus began a habit that has gone on now for almost half a century (sadly, minus the excitement of finding my father’s dollar bribe).
When you settle on a word, you’ll want to write down the word, its correct spelling and pronunciation, its various meanings, its derivation, any relevant history concerning the word, along with any personal reactions or observations about the word. Finally, you want to compose a sentence containing the new word. As an example, here is a brain-related word taken from Norman W. Schur’s
2000 Most Challenging and Obscure Words:
Cerebrate
(SER uh brate) verb. To
cerebrate
is to use the mind, to think, or to think about.
Cerebration
(ser uh BRAY shuhn) is the working of the brain.
Unconscious cerebration
is the term used in psychology to describe the reaching of mental results without conscious thoughts. The American novelist Henry James (1843-1915) in
The American
wrote of “the deep well of
unconscious cerebration.
Both verb and noun are derived from Latin
cerebrum
(brain) which has been taken into English (SER uh brum; suh REE bruhm) to denote the front part of the brain, which controls voluntary movements and coordinates mental activity.” In
The Human Comedy,
the American historian James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936) wrote: “Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster.” Note Robinson’s date of death—many years before television served to exacerbate the situation.
Anyone can easily turn up new and intellectually stimulating facts about words with dictionaries and Internet sources. For instance, take a moment and do a quick Internet search by entering “Cerebrate definition.” You’ll learn about cerebralism, how to identify a cerebralist, and anticipate how he might respond to questions about the origin of the human mind. You’ll learn how to recognize cerebricity when you encounter it. You’ll also learn about cerebrates, powerful psychics (also referred to as “zerg cerebrates”) from the StarCraft science fiction series of books and video games. These latter references can provide you with the material to compose your comments and responses to the new word.

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