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In the last article, I shared with you the importance of looking after your gut as a way to support brain health.
I also shared with you 20 different foods that you can eat to improve brain function and overall physical health, as well as reduce stress and combat depression.
In this article, we are going to look at the truth about brain training and, in this and subsequent articles, we will look at more practical ways to train your brain.
I will also introduce you to the concept of brain plasticity.
You can use brain training to achieve plasticity in order to grow and reshape your brain in much the same way you can reshape your muscles through strength training.
This means that just as a bodybuilder can increase their muscle size and, thus, shape their body into the physique they want, so too can you potentially use brain training to develop key brain areas and to design the kind of intelligence you want.
Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands (SAID)
The general principle behind growing and shaping your brain is the same as the general principle behind growing and reshaping muscle.
It goes by the acronym SAID: Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands. You want better math ability? Then do more math. You want better spatial awareness? Then use that part of your brain.
You want to learn the guitar, or as in Josh Kaufman’s case, the ukelele?
Incidentally, doing math is a left-hemisphere (“left-brain”) activity. Increasing spatial awareness is a right-hemisphere (“right-brain”) activity.
A creative way to teach a math class
There is an interesting case that I want to share here.
If you are familiar with my other website at Fionn Ross Online, you might have read a book review I did of Clyde W. Ford’s book, The Hero With An African Face.
The second chapter ends with an intriguing case involving the application of a creative approach to a complex subject within his teaching practice.
How do you go about teaching geometry within a math class without a textbook?
In this case, it was through the speeches of Malcolm X.
After some weeks, one student decided he wanted to teach the class.
The teacher gave way and the student did a much better job communicating mathematical principles to students deemed “unteachable” by the system.
His website can be found at http://www.clydeford.com
(I am not an affiliate)
By the way, the SAID principle is attributed to Dr. Fred Hatfield (1942-2017), champion powerlifter, teacher, and founder of the International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA).
It is one of his Seven Granddaddy Laws of Training.
Most of us don’t look at training the brain in such creative ways though. We use brain training in a very general sense and with no real objective.
It’s something like what I was taught by my philosophy teacher: learning to see with the ear, for example…
Let us now look at brain plasticity
Perhaps we also don’t realize the potential of our brains at all.
For an idea of just what is possible, recall the case of Ben Underwood (mentioned in the video), who managed to develop ‘sonar’ to find his way around and to compensate for a loss of vision.
If you can develop your sense of hearing to the point where you can use sonar, then imagine what you could do with other parts of your brain?
Try achieving something like this through playing a simple word game on some app!
There is an interesting Wikipedia entry on the subject of human echolocation which includes information on Ben Underwood and others like him, as well as several YouTube ™ videos you might wish to view that feature Ben Underwood.
Einstein’s brain
Structural differences in the brain certainly do correspond with differences in the nature and extent of human intelligence and there is, probably, no better example of this than Einstein’s brain.
Einstein had unusual large inferior parietal lobes which were also strangely shaped.
Your brain and my brain have a large cleave cutting through the middle of this structure called the Sylvian Fissure.
Interestingly, Einstein’s veered upwards and didn’t completely divide the lobes. His were also symmetrical, whereas most are smaller on the left.
The role of the inferior parietal lobe is to integrate sensory information across modalities.
It is particularly important when it comes to spatial sense and navigation.
So, when we listen to Einstein’s accounts of how he came up with his theory of special relativity – by imagining himself to be travelling on a beam of light and looking back at the world around him leading to an innate understanding of the relationship between time and movement…it kinda makes sense.
He was using the right hemisphere of his brain. Is that correct?
What also makes sense is that Einstein had a thicker corpus callosum – a structure that joins the two hemispheres of the brain.
This would allow different brain areas to communicate more effectively, thereby leading to greater whole brain connectivity (which we know to be an important predictor of general intelligence).
It also follows that Einstein was ambidextrous. Did you know that?
Apparently, it is rumored that he didn’t start speaking until the age of four? And, apparently, he also flunked eighth-grade!
The take-home message is that you could, theoretically, learn to think like Einstein.
First, by increasing your plasticity, then by practicing visualization and navigation to grow your inferior parietal lobes and perhaps by practicing ambidexterity to grow the corpus callosum.
We will look at visualization in a later article.
However great though he was, you might not wish to emulate Einstein. Instead, focus on becoming the very best version of you.
Dare I say – you might even surpass Einstein!
I will tell you how you just might be able to do that in the next article.
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
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