Memory Tricks For Your Brain: Visualizing

From Denny: When you are a student there always seems to be endless dates and quotes to remember. And you know you will probably never see those same inconsequential offenders ever again for the rest of your entire life - and that of everyone you know. :)

When I was a little girl I used to get yelled at for doing these short stories in my head to help me remember things. My parents thought me weird. OK, I even got yelled at in a play writing class when I was one of two juniors in a class with grad students. The professor was some miffed he needed two more bodies to fill the class or he wouldn't get paid that semester for the class.

So, he was no fan of the Undergrad Two and rode us constantly. He was thoroughly exasperated as to how I was not crumbling up wads of paper and throwing them in the waste can (pre-computer days) or thoroughly frustrated while going through the supposedly torturous writing process.

I told him I write in my head. He looked at me like I was from Mars. I told him when the movie was finished in my head, after re-writing the scenes, then I would put it down on paper. And I did. He liked the little one-act play and was forever silent on what to him was a very foreign and unorthodox writing process.

I sure do love technology. It's as if I was born for tech. The keyboard can almost keep up with my flying fingers and rapid thoughts. However, since I'm a right-brained type who figured out how to live in a left-brained world, I also know there are a lot of left-brain types who struggle with visualization. It's downright torturous for them.

You might be one of those people who never learned well or easily how to do this for yourself. While I don't expect you to write a movie in your head, you may find this short video quite useful for improving your memory under pressure.

Right-brained people can profit from this video as well.  You might be someone who thinks in pictures but has problems sounding coherent in a left-brained environment.   This process can help organize your thoughts to come out of your mouth in a more efficient way for people to be able to relate to what you are discussing.

You probably already know about how to take a word or phrase you want to remember - but it's so damned dull your brain starts to snooze - so you have to come up with a memory trick to make it exciting for your brain to retain it. This video shows you the basic process to get going on it. The rest is up to you to experiment with it, adjusting it to your personality to create a great fit. Have some fun and Happy Writing In Your Head! :)

Music: Training Your Brain to Concentrate Better

From Denny: We all love music. There is some music that the brain really likes. When you soothe the emotions to quiet down, the thoughts focus better. The trick is to hit it just right that you don't get so relaxed you want to sleep. :) You want to hit that meditative level where you get into the zone of clearing clutter from your mind and can easily do that problem-solving at a faster rate.

And, if you really want to boost your memory power, pull out that frankincense essential oil and take a whiff. You can also place it in a bath with some almond oil. Almond oil is closest to the natural oil of human skin.

Take a listen and see how music can train your brain to think better.

National Day of Unplugging 2011 and Funny Tech Cartoons

Image via Wikipedia

From Denny: Yesterday, thousands of people connected by disconnecting as they turned off their smartphones, laptops, tablets and other techie toys. The goal is to leave them off for 24 hours and interact more with the people in front of you, you know, like your friends and family. Forget texting or social networks for at least 24 hours.

We all complain about reclaiming our time as our own. Well, our brains would sure enjoy more time unplugged as well. Remember that the right side of the brain needs more time for processing creativity but can't work as deeply or as much if the left side analytical is literally hogging all the memory space.

Actually, I forgot about this unplugging day but coincidentally, I just happened to be in tune anyway. I unplugged on Thursday and part of Friday because I could tell my brain needed a rest. It was time to decompress from too much technical input like statistics which we bloggers are forever collecting as we grow our blogs. After time away I always come back refreshed and can actually write my many posts in a shorter amount of time.

Tech people don't think twice about housekeeping their computers with diagnostics that clean out the temporary files and other junk. Why not give your brain - and your emotions - some time out as well to flush the unnecessary files? Consider unplugging as a regular routine every so often. Your stress level will drop significantly and your production will sky rocket to new heights.

This national day was started by a non-profit group of Jewish artists called Reboot. Their ongoing project is called the Sabbath Manifesto.

As much as I love science and technology I'm always doing something visual to give balance to the brain. Here are some technology funnies for your visual part of the brain to enjoy too:

Most Popular Posts 2009 at The Soul Calendar

Check out the most popular posts this year that concentrated on news about the brain and astronomy.

From Denny: Thank you for your support this year! So many interesting articles to write about science news and so little time to produce them... This year it was fascinating to write about the strides science has made in understanding more about the brain. Illusions are always great fun to ponder too. Astronomy is the universe without and the brain is the universe within. :)

Check out these popular posts too:  Most Popular Posts 2010 at The Soul Calendar


Here's the most popular posts for 2009:


Fun Cartoon Review: Happy New Year!

Video: How Weird Would Earth Look with Saturns Rings?

Rare Blue Moon Shines on New Years Eve, Origin of 6 Meanings

Check Out Cosmic Generator Producing Energy at Rate of 100K Suns

Slamming Low-Ride Satellite Maps Earths Magnetic Field

Funny Halloween Quotes, Halloween Cartoon

Brain: Free Printable Brain Teasers Are Used In Business As Motivational Tools

10 Funny Quotes, Late Night Show Funnies, Spiritual Thought of the Day, Why Obama Deserves Nobel Peace Prize

Astronomy: Butterfly Nebula

Fingerprint Science Project for Kids

5 Funny Quotes That Spit on Death

Astronomy: Hand of God Nebula

Just How Do You Store All That Sun Power From the Solar Panels Anyway?

Brain: Relationship of Thinning of Brain's Cortex Linked to Depression


Video: Test Your Moon Trivia, Learn Whats in Your Night Sky

Can You Really Separate the Liars from the Truth-Tellers?

Astronomy: Photo of Our Galactic Center!

How Senator Ted Kennedy Affected Your Life in America

3 Octupi Videos: Escape of the Shapeshifting Octupus

Video: Who Lives in the 11th Dimension?

Millions Watch Solar Eclipse: Awe and Fear

10 Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo Landing

40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

Video: Nuclear Weapons, Who Has Them and How Much?

CNN: Japanese Fishermen Brace for Giant Jellyfish

Brain: Our Culture Influences How Our Brains Function

Brain: Can Science Rekindle Romantic Flames?

Brain: Synchronized Brain Waves Focus Our Attention

Cool Optical Illusion: Rotating Circles

3 Abstract Optical Illusions

Coming Soon: Photographic Memory in a Pill?

Did an ice age boost human brain size?

Video: Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs

Brain: Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER - over at Lite Mind blog that looks for ways to use our minds efficiently

Video: Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs

From Denny: This is an interesting study to back up other studies about the brain and development. From other posts I've done on the brain and children - and what is not mentioned here - is that when experiencing stress the brain is bathed in stress chemicals. Those stress chemicals inhibit the brain from learning. Abused children experience long term stress, long term batheing the brain in stress chemicals and so do not easily experience success in the world as adults.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Did an ice age boost human brain size?

From New Scientist: Did an ice age boost human brain size?

From Denny: We all wonder just how did the human brain evolve and become larger. Who knows? We may still be evolving and developing larger brains? As always, it's best to study our past to learn what might trend for our future.

It was 2.5 million years ago that our ancestors' brains expanded in size. BTW, it also coincided with an ice age. Hmmm...? Scientists wonder if there was a connection.

Did you know the modern human brain is a real energy glutton? C'mon, you feel hungry after spending a lot of time on the computer, don't you? I sure do; I know my brain is actually the hungry guy. Turns out that the brain accounts for almost half of our resting metabolic rate! Whew!

A decade old hypothesis by biologists David Schwartzman and George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington, D.C. suggests that our modern brain could not have evolved until that 2.5 million years ago ice age. Why? Their idea is that "such a large brain would have generated heat faster than it could dissipate it in the warmer climate of earlier times." Problem is that they couldn't prove it back then.

Apparently, a Climate researcher, Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany has been doing some research that could help prove the ice age-larger brain connection.

It does make you wonder if the ice age brought a bigger brain does this warmer climate change bring a smaller brain? Hmmm... back to stupid is as stupid does? :)

To find out and read the rest of their article, go here.

Abstract Optical Illusions: Faces

First you will notice a man's face. Look closely and you will also see a word spelled out on the diagonal. Hint: Begins with the letter "L."



Saving the best for last. If the text is too small on the photo here are the instructions:

1 – Relax and concentrate on the 4 small dots in the center for about 30 seconds

2 – Change your focus over to a wall near you, a smooth single-colored surface

3 – A circle of light will begin to develop

4 – Blink your eyes a few times and a figure will begin to emerge

5 – What do you see – who do you see?

This is one of the coolest illustions I've seen yet and the last thing I ever expected! Our brains can entertain us all day long...

Brain: Give Your Brain a Workout with Some Fun Brain Teasers

Give Your Brain a Workout with Some Fun Brain Teasers: "Giving your brain a workout with brain teasers is a whole lot more fun than physical exercise, don’t you think?"

By Dottie1 @ HubPages

From Denny: I just love brain teasers when they are fun like this! Read my friend's interesting and informative article over at HubPages.

Brain: Study Eyes Autism and Brain Size

Image by alles-schlumpf via Flickr

From Denny: Published 4 May 2009 in the Archives of General Psychiatry is a new study about the brain size in autistic small children. The study was done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

What part of the brain did researchers focus?

There is a region deep in the brain that helps control emotions. It also regulates attention and reads social cues from eye contact. This region of the brain is called the amygdala.

Who was studied?

The scientists studied two-year-olds with and without autism.

What did these researchers find?

What was quite a surprise is that autistic children exhibited a more enlarged amygdala where non-autistic children did not. This unusual distinction persisted in the follow-up screening of these same children two years later.

How is this study helpful?

For autism researchers this study adds insight into the brain size anomalies of autism and could help doctors diagnose autism.

Most of all, this study could help develop new interventions that help strengthen young childrens' social functioning.

Written by Denny Lyon

Brain: What Are the Long Term Effects of Brain Injury in Children?

Image via Wikipedia

Since the onset of the Iraq War we have been hearing a lot in the news about TBI – Traumatic Brain Injury. Soldiers and combat reporters have told their similar stories again and again.

Brain Injury in Children

Did you know that half a million school children experience at least mildly traumatic brain injuries every year in America? Until a recent study little was known about the long term effects of traumatic brain injuries for children.

This new study was done at Ohio State University at Columbus and published by Keith Yeates, Ph.D. in the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, "Pediatrics in Review."

Post-Concussive Syndrome

Researchers term it Post-concussive Syndrome. Several areas are affected such as emotional, cognitive (thinking ability) and somatic (medical code word for what affects only the body as separate from the mind).

Symptoms of Post-Concussive Syndrome

What are the symptoms to look for? Here’s a rundown of the list:

• being tired
• headaches
• memory difficulties
• light sensitivity
• feeling dizzy
• irritability (crankiness)
• anxiety
• attention problems
• depression or sad mood
• difficulty concentrating/thinking
• vision problems
• noise sensitivity
• difficulty sleeping
• anhedonia (lack of interest in pleasurable activities)
• change in personality

About the Year Long Study

It was a 12 month study of long term effects that followed 189 school age children who had experienced TBI. The second group they followed was 99 school age children who had not experienced brain injury but orthopedic injuries.

Researchers' Findings

What did they find? Among the TBI group it was amazing that 64% did not experience any post-concussive symptoms at all. From two weeks up to a year later, 12% experienced moderate symptoms. Severe symptoms were experienced by 15% two weeks after the injury but did manage to resolve within the year. Severe symptoms experienced two weeks from the injury that did not resolve and continued a year later were 9%.

What happened with the non-brain orthopedic injury group? Their results were quite different. 79% of the children did not experience any post-concussive symptoms whatsoever at any time. 15% did experience moderate symptoms two weeks after the injury and up to a year later. Severe symptoms were experienced by 5% two weeks after the injury that did resolve by a year. Only 1% of the children experienced severe symptoms two weeks after the injury that did not resolve 12 months later.

Study's Conclusions

Previous to the findings in this study it was thought that the effects of the mild traumatic brain injury effects in children subsided within three months.

The study’s conclusion was that following the injury severe symptoms were most likely experienced by the TBI children. It was also the TBI children, 37% of them, who would continue to experience post-concussive symptoms 12 months later. If there were no other symptoms accompanying amnesia and disorientation immediately after a TBI, then it was considered a very good sign of a positive outcome a year later.

Study's citation, go here.

Written by Denny Lyon

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Astronomy: Another Astreroid Buzzed Earth Today

From Denny: Apologies to everyone who has been looking for recent brain and astronomy articles from me. Spent the past couple of weeks recovering from allergy season which usually never affects me. Must be the global warming or something equally geeky...

Anyway, I'm getting back to finding more than just videos for you. Though I have recently discovered a real treasure chest of well-produced videos from reputable sources. YouTube may have quantity but it suffers from quality and a plethora of inaccurate, misleading or downright bad information that in good conscience I just can't put up here for the public. I vett everything that goes up here on all my blogs, especially keeping in mind that parents and children are a big part of my audience. Thanks for supporting this blog! Now on to the latest news to almost affect our little planet called Earth.

***

Image by anomalous4 via Flickr

Another so-called small asteroid buzzed us today of April 8th – welcome to the celestial Easter season – apparently, this size of asteroid whizzes past the Earth every few months. For a post by a Canadian astronomer, Nite Sky Girl, go here.

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• Scientists team up with B.C. firm to build biggest-ever optical telescope (cbc.ca)
• Asteroid Nearly Misses Earth Monday (geeksaresexy.net)
• Odd Asteroid Hangs Out with Earth (space.com)

Brain: Sensation versus Perception - Visual Illusions

Sensation versus Perception - Visual Illusions -

"We are not aware of objects themselves but of neural signals about them that are transmitted through our nerves. Perception is a dynamic cognitive process of interpreting information.

It is also learned and is an interpretative process which is subject to influence of other psycho-physiological processes such as emotion, motivation and culture."

By rumelphones @ HubPages

Brain: In One Ear and Out the Other

From Denny: It turns out our brain's short-term memory can usually only handle between 5 to 9 data chunks at a time before clearing the cache. It doesn't help any that our brains love pattern and predictable patterns at that. We like to organize new information and our perception into patterns. That's why music is so easy to remember.

Take into account that a really good joke relies upon subverting the predictable pattern recognition we expect. Jokes love shouting the unexpected to our brains, like a magician utilizing misdirection, starting on one path and then suddenly jerking us on to another path.

"Robert Provine, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, 'What makes a joke successful are the same properties that can make it difficult to remember.'"

We can remember the cliched jokes like the mother-in-law ones. Why? They have predictable patterns!

An additional reason we can't easily recall that stellar joke:

"Daniel L. Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard, there is a big difference between verbatim recall of all the details of an event and gist recall of its general meaning. Jokes tend to live or die because of the details of nuance, precision and timing."

*** THE ARTICLE CLIP ***

"By all accounts, my grandfather Nathan had the comic ambitions of a Jack Benny but the comic gifts of a John Kerry. Undeterred, he always kept a few blank index cards in his pocket, so that if he happened to hear a good joke, he’d have someplace to write it down.

Like many people, I can never remember a joke. I hear or read something hilarious, I laugh loudly enough to embarrass everybody else in the library, and then I instantly forget everything about it — everything except the fact, always popular around the dinner table, that 'I heard a great joke today, but now I can’t remember what it was.'

For researchers who study memory, the ease with which people forget jokes is one of those quirks, those little skids on the neuronal banana peel, that end up revealing a surprising amount about the underlying architecture of memory.

And there are plenty of other similarly illuminating examples of memory’s whimsy and bad taste — like why you may forget your spouse’s birthday but will go to your deathbed remembering every word of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song. And why you must chop a string of data like a phone number into manageable and predictable chunks to remember it and will fall to pieces if you are in Britain and hear a number read out as “double-four, double-three.” And why your efforts to fill in a sudden memory lapse by asking your companions, “Hey, what was the name of that actor who starred in the movie we saw on Friday?” may well fail, because (what useless friends!) now they’ve all forgotten, too.

Welcome to the human brain, your three-pound throne of wisdom with the whoopee cushion on the seat."

By Natalie Angier @ New York Times

Brain: Brain Scanners Know Where You've Been

"The brain's center of memory and navigation, once considered too disorganized to decode, may soon be unlocked. Using a brain scanner, researchers were able to determine the location of people standing in a virtual room from the activity in their brains.

"We could read their spatial memories, so to speak," said study co-author Eleanor Maguire, a University College, London, cognitive neuroscientist. "There must be a structure to how this is coded in the neurons. Otherwise we couldn't have predicted this."

Maguire's team focused on the hippocampus, a region of the forebrain responsible for processing spatial relationships and short-term memories. As people move, hippocampal activation helps them know where they are. In Alzheimer's patients, disorientation and memory loss go hand in hand...

Maguire's study, published Thursday in Current Biology, challenges that notion. And though it's far too soon to pull memories directly from a brain, the findings suggest future avenues of research on Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

"How these millions of hippocampal neurons work is a fundamental question in neuroscience," said Maguire. "We still don't know how the hippocampal neural code is organized to support memory and activation."

The researchers used an fMRI machine to measure hippocampal blood flow in four subjects who navigated a room in virtual reality. They focused on groups of neurons identified by Maguire in an earlier study of London taxi drivers, whose hippocampi were hyperdeveloped by years of mental navigation through the city's mazelike streets.

After analyzing activation patterns and correlating them with a record of test subjects' movements, Maguire's team found that patterns could actually be used to predict location."

By Brandon Keim

From Denny: Pretty wild stuff! While they are still a long way from fully understanding the complete process of laying down memory or even how memory deteriorates, this small study is an intriguing first step.

Bad News for Teachers: Research Says Doodling Boosts Concentration

Image via Wikipedia

"Doodling isn’t the distraction it’s commonly thought to be, researchers say–in fact, it aids concentration, and memory. A new study suggests that doodling takes up just enough attention to keep the brain from wandering further afield, explains lead researcher Jackie Andrade.

'If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream. Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poor performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task' [BBC News], Andrade says."

From Denny: As a class "A" doodler I now hearby feel vindicated. These days it's called mind mapping. :) Seriously, it does make sense for people to doodle because of one thing: the brain thinks in pictures!

What's fun about doodling is that the images are symbols of detailed meanings specific to that one person. You have your own encrypted code! You have to know the person well in order to hack their internal computer.

A Whole New Mind

“The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind — computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands.” - A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

"This starts and sets the tone for the thought-provoking best-seller A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink. In an easy-to-read way, Dan outlines the changes that are underway, as well as how to develop ourselves in order to thrive in this new era.

Half-a-Mind Is Not Enough

A Whole New Mind is based extensively on the classic left/right brain metaphor — and I must say it’s a very useful one in making the point of the book.

In the last few decades, most of the thriving professionals were those who excelled in “left-brain thinking” — information processing, sequential thinking, analysis, logic, organization, numeric ability and attention to detail.

Lately, however, information is getting easier and easier to acquire. Knowledge that was once locked behind hard-to-earn degrees is becoming widely and cheaply available. In this new world, a great deal of the information processing we performed can now be cheaply automated or assigned to high-qualified professionals overseas — for a fraction of the cost.

Although “left brain skills” continue to be useful, they’re not enough anymore. The rules of the game are changing."

By Luciano Passuello
Litemind.com

From Denny: Well, I guess the right-brained ones finally win! Yay! When I was a kid I was called stupid because I liked to take disparate elements be they people or situations or objects and synthesize them into a new meaning. These days folks like me are being hailed as brilliant! Gee, maybe the world finally caught up to the minority? This isn't rocket science, folks. It's fun doing right-brained things!

Photo by Hammer51012 @ flickr

Improve Your Memory by Speaking Your Mind's Language

"By learning the language your mind uses, you’ll be able to tap into your mind’s full potential and develop a remarkable memory. It’s easier than you think - and you’ll actually have fun doing it.

Your Mind Thinks in Pictures

Along its evolution, the brain has become amazingly effective in dealing with sensory data. It is by correctly interpreting the five senses that the mind understands the environment and takes decisions.

Among the human senses, sight has become the most sophisticated and developed of all. For that reason, our brains have become extremely effective in storing and processing images; especially of concrete, real-world objects. Trying to memorize abstract symbols, such as words printed on a page, is very unnatural and inefficient. Words are useful units of communication created by us, but they’re not how our brains are best used to process information."

By Luciano Passuelloon

I just love this guy's blog and so will you!

The Science Behind Self-Affirmations

The Science Behind Self-Affirmations - Here's a short informative article about how positive self-talk works in conjunction with the brain.

By Maddie Ruud
Photo by tapperboy @ flickr