A QUICK & BRISK LESSON FROM MY SLIDEWORKS: RACK YOUR BRAINS ~ Part II

[continued from the Last Post.]

A QUICK & BRISK LESSON FROM MY SLIDEWORKS

The following slides were extracted from my presentation materials, under the tail segment or epilogue of 'Understanding Your Brain', which I had often used in my strategy & innovation workshops for entrepreneurs, managers, & professionals throughout the nineties till the early 21st century.

[In the class, besides short lectures & debriefings, participants played a lot of vision games & do a plethora of self-discovery exercises, some of which I will share with readers in this weblog.]

Specifically, I had used the slides to summarise the pertinent key points in terms of understanding the intricacies as well as idiosyncrasies of the human mind, & also how they could affect our peak performance & what we could do to use what we know & our resources to make our life better.

MOVEMENT IS ESSENTIAL TO EFFICIENT BRAIN USAGE

The foregoing generates synergy, energy and power.

Brain-body coordination is enhanced significantly through the considered use of movement, and it has been recognised that mental fitness equates directly with physical fitness. Since we have a brain, and since it does happen to be connected to the body, we should know that one complements the other. Move one, move the other, and raise your intellect!

It is of utmost importance to be physically fit. This is because it affects your health and well-being, creating a balance between mind and body. Furthermore, it will help you develop poise in your movements. Activities that can help in this respect are the martial arts such as akido, t'ai chi, judo, or juggling, and the Alexander Technique. Sports in general are highly recommended.

Indulge in aerobic forms of exercise at least three times a week, building up strength and flexibility in your muscles. Involve yourself in physical as well as mental gymnastics, but make sure you get sufficient rest and time for play.

Take up sports, develop new hobbies, acquire poise through various activities. Eat and drink sensibly, as your behaviour in this respect directly affects the performance of your brain.

Remember, every time your heart beats, the first place your blood shoots to your brain. This blood contains oxygen, that powers your brain... more oxygen equates with greater creative ability.

Great brain power leads to a formidable memory.

We are shaped by the books we read, the people we meet, the thoughts we think, and the actions we perform. None of this would be possible without being physically and mentally energised.

The ultimate consequence is to be spiritually revitalised so that we allow ourselves to be plugged in to the energy of our universe.

Remember, mens sana in corpore sano...

[Excerpted from 'Brain Symphony: Brain-blazing Practical Techniques in Creativity for Immediate Application', by Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

All I know is that, our body is designed to move, & not to sit on the butt all day long.

This has to do with human evolution: our forefathers were hunters-gatherers ~ roaming the savannahs, hunting for food & searching for new landscapes.

Just in case you are still wondering about what your boss is thinking about you: pacing in the office, while deep in thought, is a productive activity. It's 'Thinking on Your Feet'!

In fact, according to neuro-scientists, movement is the only thing that unites all brain levels & integrates the right & left hemispheres of our brain.

In a nut shell, action is the cutting edge of the mind.

FUZZY, BUT THE BRAIN CAN STILL FIGURE IT OUT!

Interestingly, at first instance, the whole text with jumbled-up letters seems fuzzy, but it only takes a short while for the brain to figure out the big picture.

Thanks to the innate self-organising & pattern recognition capabilities of our brains. That's how I see it.

For the record, the foregoing text should actually read as follows:

"I couldn't believe that I could actually understand what I was reading:

THE PHENOMENAL POWER OF THE HUMAN MIND

According to a researcher at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.

Amazing, huh?"

Nonetheless, to understand the other perspectives of this phenomenon, please proceed to this link. I should thank Pat Johnson, a blog reader & fellow explorer for the link.

BORED BRAIN OR BORING LECTURE?

On Saturday, after a gruelling four-hour morning session of 'pow-wow' at a couple's place in Seletar to explore a potential long-term project to equip primary school students with effective study skills to tackle the pivotal PSLE, Dilip & I visited the SIM HQ in Clementi to attend a lecture.

The lecture was part of the SIM Members' Day.

A bald-headed chubby guy, of South African origin, was scheduled to talk about 'Challenge Your Brain' at 2.30pm. His name was Nick French, Director & Principal of Image Advancements, a cross-cultural communications consultancy.

We were there just in time after a quick snack at the cafeteria.

At the onset, Nick asked the participants as to why were there that afternoon. One participant sitting right in front posed: "Surprise me!".

After that short preliminary, Nick introduced himself as chemical-salesman/commodity-trader turned consultant.

With the aid of Powerpoint slides, Nick started off with a focal point on "the interplay of crisis management, communication & connection, creativity".

He then ran through some brain facts: anatomy, four lobes, limbic system, amygdala.

His three illustrative examples of crisis response situations:

- one involving his safari trip in the wild with lions;

- another about Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger III & his expert manoeuvring of US Airways Flight #1549, after being hit by a flock of birds, disabling both engines, for an eventually miraculous crash-landing on the Hudson River early this year - all passengers suvived!; &

- last about Hillary Clinton, tackling a specific Q&A response as visiting US Secretary of State to the African region [in a brisk video clip], which exposed her abrasive side;

were interesting.

In a nut shell, when we are in a crisis situation, learn to think fast on our feet. Nick mentioned the apt term "metacognition" i.e. 'thinking about thinking".

As he continued to ramble - just like a lecturer in a classroom - about the brain: left-brain/right-brain (Roger Sperry), corpus callosum, levels of brain activity, iceberg metaphor, & other brain characteristics, boredom started to set in my mind, as I struggled to keep myself awake. I even tried to make my own rough notes in the handout, so as to keep my brain from "blanking out".

I noted that Dilip was feeling very restless in his seat.

I was very surprised to note that Nick wasn't aware that, especially in the afternoon, after lunch, a pure lecture format with no interactive exercises to get audience involvement, worked against our brains. Worst still, his voice was monotonous.

In the next part, he talked about the whole brain model of Ned Herrmann & Kobus Neethling, with a focus on thinking preferences.

Luckily, at least to break the monotony, he invited audience participation to figure out his preferred thinking style, with the use of a competition [we were asked to write our names on ice cream sticks, which were then to be slotted into four empty canisters, representing the four modes of logician (L1), organiser (L2), visionary (R1) & communicator (R2) respectively] in which selected winners were entitled to boxes of South African tea.

At the tail end of the talk, he finally managed to share some amusing anecdotes about couple's thinking preferences, with some references to Allan Pease's work.

By the way, Nick was L1, which probably explained the seemingly boring lecture.

Personally, I felt that he rambled too much on the brain stuff - which were already common knowledge in today's context - at the beginning stage.

Also, he should have injected fun exercises or humorous games to jazz up his presentation.

Our neural plasticity was not put to the test, since all of us were just sitting there listening. No doing!, except a minimal one at the tail end.

Nick should have realised that our brains require synaptic workouts to stay alert, let alone to learn & grow.

He should have known that a lecture format as he had followed did not foster novelty & challenge to our dendrites.

My end analysis: Athough I felt that the lecture was informative, I also felt that the title of the lecture, 'Challenge Your Brain', was a real misnomer. Nick's focus was essentially understanding your brain's thinking preferences.

Nonetheless, before leaving the lecture theatre, Dilip went to ask the guy at the front, who posed "Surprise Me!" at the beginning, whether he was surprised after the lecture. He shook his head.

DEBUNKING 10 BRAIN MYTHS

From the book, 'The Sharp Brains Guide to Brain Fitness', comes this interesting debunking exposition on myths pertaining to brain health & brain training.

A quick one:

Myth 1. Genes determine the fate of our brains.

Myth 2. Aging means automatic decline.

Myth 3. Medication is the main hope for cognitive enhancement.

Myth 4. We will soon have a Magic Pill or General Solution to solve all our cognitive challenges.

Myth 5. There is only one “it” in “Use It or Lose it”.

Myth 6. All brain activities or exercises are equal.

Myth 7. There is only one way to train your brain.

Myth 8. We all have something called “Brain Age”.

Myth 9. That “brain age” can be reversed by 10, 20, 30 years.

Myth 10. All human brains need the same brain training.

Go to this link to read about it.

[The images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

A PICTURE SPEAKS A THOUSAND WORDS: YOUR BRAIN'S TWO HEMISPHERES

[All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

THE CENTURY OF THE BRAIN!

Your brain is a creamy coloured, wrinkled object, feels like a raw egg, and can fit in the palm of your hand.

Brain cells are known as neurons, of which there are roughly 100 billion...that’s the number 1 with eleven zeros after it!

Each of these neurons connects to thousands of other neurons! That’s as many connections as there are stars in The Milky Way!


A piece of brain the size of a pinhead contains approximately 60,000 neurons!

A child’s brain is a miracle learning organism. By the age of two, it has twice as many connections between neurons, and uses twice as much food energy as an adult brain.

Every thought a child thinks ripples across his or her brain’s fabulous network of nerves.

[Excerpted from the 'Brainbabes' edition of The Ingenius Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

Attention all parents out there! You are your child's first teacher.

Learn as much as you can about maximum brainpower so that you can serve as an effective guide as well as active facilitator in your child's development during his or her growing years.

MOVEMENT IS ESSENTIAL TO BRAIN DEVELOPMENT!

As an extension to my earlier post, I thought it would be a good idea to pull out the following brief essay from the 'Brainbabies' edition of The InGenius Series of bookazines, originally intended for kids & their parents, by Dilip Mukerjea:

Do you know that...

As an immature larva, the sea squirt (a marine creature) spends its time swimming around. It can move, see and sense, and it has a wee brain.

However, when it becomes mature, the sea squirt changes its lifestyle and attaches itself to a rock.

It no longer swims around, because it now lives by eating other little stuff in the seawater. At this stage, the sea squirt performs a miraculous act: it eats its own brain!

Because it no longer needs it! No movement, no brain!

Movement is essential to brain development!

[All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

GET UP & GET MOVING!

Our physical bodies are designed to move, & not to sit down all day long! This has probably something to do with our forefathers who were hunters-gatherers.

In an earlier post, entitled 'Movement, The Essence of Creativity', Dilip Mukerjea wrote about the significance of movement to our creative brain functions.

At this juncture, I like to recap Dilip’s last sentence of his foregoing essay:

“Move, and with every movement, the world expands, offering up its infinite horde of creative treasures.”

All I know instinctively or rather have always experienced is this:

Whenever I am stuck with a problem, I just stand up & move, while still deep in thought, & invariably my mind often opens up to seeing many options.

Sometimes, I just stand up & do a number of fancy moves from Brain Gym, like 'Cross Crawl'.

So, the image of a corporate executive pacing in his office is not about random activity; he is thinking at his best!

Naturally, the title of this blog post also implies that once a solution or an idea evolves from the contribution of physical movement, one must also put it to work immediately.

[All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

DO PEOPLE USE ONLY 10% OF THEIR BRAINS?

The following report in a belated issue of the 'Scientific American' throws some light on the foregoing question.

Nevertheless, I am intrigued by the concluding remark in the report:

". . . out of all the brain's cells, only 10 percent are neurons; the other 90 percent are glial cells, which encapsulate and support neurons, but whose function remains largely unknown.

Ultimately, it's not that we use 10 percent of our brains, merely that we only understand about 10 percent of how it functions."