Sculpt Your Brain

From my reading about brains and minds, I have become convinced that we can compensate for many weaknesses in our own brains by deliberately stimulating the weak part of the brain. For most of us, that is not a big deal until we start to notice that our brains are aging. Then it gets important pretty quickly. If you have any doubt about how much control you have over keeping your brain firing on all cylinders well into your 90’s, please read on.

We have Learning Disabilities in our family, so The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: How I Left My Learning Disability Behind and Other Stories of Cognitive Transformation by Barbara Arrowsmith-Young gave me hope.

Barbara’s book explains how she developed a brilliant auditory and visual memory in her struggle to compensate for several severe learning disabilities. By sheer dogged persistence, she graduated from high school, then university. Later she was accepted for graduate studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and here her struggles continued.

To understand a research paper, she often had to read it twenty times. Everything involving reading, writing, and thinking took persistent repetition before she could derive any sense from it. In fact, she did not learn to tell time from clocks until she discovered just how to remediate her many deficits.

Barbara had tried the typical treatments for Learning Disabilities which involved 'compensation'. People who had difficulty reading were told to listen to audio tapes of the information. Those who were 'slow' writing, were given extra time in exams or were allowed to take exams orally. If they had trouble following an argument, they were taught to colour-code the key points. The problem with these compensation techniques, is that the person using them could get through certain academic challenges, but their deficits in reading, writing, or doing math did not change.

In fact, Barbara’s Master’s degree thesis on the results of her study of children with learning disabilities being treated with compensations at the OISE clinic showed that most were not really improving.

One day, a friend urged her to read some books by Aleksandr Luria, a Russian neurophysiologist who studied people with brain injuries. She read about Zazetsky, a soldier who had been wounded at the juncture of his parietal and occipital lobes and had trouble with grammar, logic, and reading clocks – just like Barbara did.

She then knew that she had deficits in a particular area of her brain, but she had no idea what to do about it.

At age 28 and still in graduate school, but getting more and more exhausted and depressed, she read a paper by Professor Mark Rosenzweig who had studied rats in stimulating and non-stimulating environments. He found that the rats in the stimulating environments had heavier brains, with more blood supply and more neurotransmitters than those in non-stimulating environments. He was one of the first scientists to show brain neuroplasticity, the possibility that stimulating certain nerve cells in the brain could lead to changes in the wiring of the brain.

Barbara designed a series of exercises for herself to stimulate her weakest function – the ability to relate symbols. One exercise involved reading hundreds of cards showing clock faces with different times on the front and the correct time on the back. The clock faces started out showing simple times with just two hands, and advanced to having second hands and even sixtieths-of-a-second hands. After weeks of daily drilling, she could not only read clocks faster than average, but she was able to grasp grammar, math, and logic. Gradually, she developed and drilled on other weaknesses for her spatial, kinesthetic, and visual disabilities, and brought them up to average level.

She then started designing exercises for children and adults who had various learning disabilities. Barbara’s Arrowsmith School in Toronto has been running for thirty years and has helped thousands of children and adults strengthen the various weaknesses in their brains.

After months, sometimes two or three years, of daily drilling under the direction of teachers trained by Barbara, these children and adults can return successfully to standard school or university programs. Over the years, Barbara and her team have developed exercises for the nineteen brain areas most commonly weakened in people with learning disabilities. There are now Arrowsmith programs in 35 schools across Canada and around the world. To learn more about these schools, please visit arrowsmithschool.org.

If you don’t want to take the time to read her book, then check into her website (barbaraarrowsmithyoung.com) and click on Articles, where there are many, many articles you will find very interesting. If you really want to understand the detail behind her breakthrough ability to help so many people with learning disabilities, read the article there called Building a Better Brain (.pdf) by Norman Doidge, MD.

Instead, consider the possibility that any man could, if he were so inclined,
be the sculptor of his own brain, and that even the least gifted may,
like the poorest land that has been well cultivated and fertilized,
produce an abundant harvest.

 - Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934), Spanish neuroscientist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1906

Disputing Your Irrational Thoughts

That *** makes me so mad!!

It feels as if ***'s behaviour instantaneously makes us angry, but really it is our own thinking that is making us that way. When we tell our subconscious, "*** should listen to me," when clearly *** is not listening to you, your subconscious will get very angry or anxious because it believes exactly what you're telling it.

But in your conscious mind, you know that other people don't often do what you think they should or shouldn't. It would be nice (but a little crazy) if everybody behaved exactly as you think they should.

In fact, you don't even behave as you think you should behave sometimes.

How often have you told yourself you should or shouldn’t do something, and then just ignored your own advice? It’s more rational to recognize that, although you would rather other people behave as you’d prefer, getting angry and frustrated about it is like getting angry with the weather. The following chart outlines popular Irrational Thoughts and the corresponding Rational Disputes that will give you more power.

You can use the chart below to reduce your stress about a situation that has caused you trouble in the past and that you anticipate may happen again.

Imagine you are in the middle of the situation again, for example – missing a deadline with your boss. Enter that as A, the Activating Event. Then, continue to imagine yourself in the middle of the situation, and record the different strong, unpleasant feelings under C, Consequences. Choose one of the strongest, most unpleasant feelings. Visualize yourself in the middle of the situation, feeling that feeling, and record the exact words you were probably saying to yourself at the time. For example,” My boss will be really angry with me.” Record your words under B. Then say to yourself, “If she is really angry with me, that means _____” and record the words that next come to mind. If _____, that means _____ - until you find yourself writing down an irrational thought (as described above). Then choose a Dispute that makes sense to you and record it under D, Dispute. Whenever you start getting uncomfortable about the issue, say the Dispute firmly to yourself as often as you need to until you feel strong enough to handle it differently.

The next time that situation arises, and you begin to feel those strong, uncomfortable feelings, say the Dispute to yourself several times and notice how your feelings change.

As you practice Rational Thinking, you will find that you can turn difficult situations into interesting challenges and even opportunities for growth. Listen to your thoughts, identify when they’re becoming irrational, and figure out a rational dispute.

photo by peretzp/Flickr

Read Faster, Remember Longer: Technique

We see and we think very rapidly, much faster than we can talk.

Have you ever been in (or narrowly avoided) an accident? Do you remember how much thinking went on in only a few seconds? We think that fast all the time and our subconscious works even faster than our conscious thinking. When you’re driving down a multi-lane highway, changing lanes, talking to your passenger, assessing hazards and watching for cops in the rear-view mirror, your eyes and your brain work almost automatically to use your well-developed driving skills and keep you safely on the road.

Are you skilled at a hobby, or a sport, or at playing a musical instrument? Do you remember how slow and clumsy you were as a beginner? Yet now you can apply the skills rapidly and easily.

Boost Your Reading Speed and Comprehension

Just as you can drive rapidly, you have the brain and eyes that allow you to read really fast. Being able to read your work related material quickly with good concentration and retention is a skill you can improve dramatically.

Here are some tips to help you read more effectively.

1. Take a document you need to read this week. First scan the whole document quickly, asking yourself “Why am I reading this now?” The answer to that question is your purpose - the reason you need to read this document this week. You need to find certain key information, you need to refresh your knowledge of some other information, and you need to page rapidly through the document to the end to get a better sense of where the “good stuff” is. This overview helps focus your attention and improve your concentration.
2. Try sliding the forefinger of your preferred hand (or your cursor) under each line, reading as quickly as you can understand. Reading is getting information from print. Keep in mind the information you are looking for and read quickly to meet your purpose.
3. Try to finish a section or chapter in 5 minutes or less, then look back over what you read and talk to yourself about what you’ve learned. You might want to make a few brief notes.
4. Continue through the document this way, reminding yourself about your purpose and looking for the information you need. If you notice that your mind starts to wander at any point, speed up. Mind wandering indicates that you are reading more slowly than you can think and that is a waste of time and energy.
5. When you have found the information you need to meet your purpose, add to your notes.
6. Then review your understanding of what you have learned and look through the document once again to pick up any additional detail which will be helpful.

This is very similar to a study technique called SQ3R, which stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review, a study method introduced by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his 1964 book, Effective Study.

This technique causes you to work much more effectively with your brain when you’re reading. By surveying the document and asking yourself questions about it, you draw information from your long-term memory and prepare your brain to learn more.

Then you read with more engagement and concentration using your finger to keep you on track.

Next you recite to yourself what you've understood while looking back over the document to remind yourself of the various aspects of what you've learned. Then you review the questions you asked yourself as you surveyed the document and make sure you know the answers.

Even if you never take a speed reading course, this focused and concentrated reading will help you read faster and remember longer. If you time yourself and keep a record of your progress, you’ll see steady improvement. If you want to push your speed and comprehension even more, consider a speed reading course.