Advanced Brain Training - Brain Train Your Way to the Top: A Teach Yourelf Guide

309 Pages·2013·1.37 MB·English

by  Terry Horne

Advanced Brain
Training
Simon Wootton
Terry Horne
Hodder Education
338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH.
Hodder Education is an Hachette UK company
First published in UK 2012 by Hodder Education
This edition published 2012
Copyright © 2012 Simon Wootton and Terry Horne
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Contents
Dedication v
Acknowledgements vi
First thoughts: Beyond brain training to Advanced
Applied Thinking vii
PART 1 The make-up of your mind: From brain training to
Applied Thinking 1
1.1 Neuroscience and mental fitness 3
1.1.1 Some thoughts about mental fitness 3
1.1.2 The brain and the mind 12
1.1.3 Male brains and female minds 14
1.2 A mental laboratory: Some thoughtful things to think about 25
1.2.1 How to make your mind fit to think 25
1.2.2 Neuroscience versus philosophy 34
1.2.3 Reason and imagination – creative intelligence 35
1.3 Workout: A mental gymnasium 45
1.3.1 How to keep your mind fit to think 45
1.3.2 Mental circuits and physical exercises 47
1.3.3 Paradoxical puzzles and devilish dilemmas 51
Summary 69
PART 2 Advanced Applied Thinking skills 71
Introduction: The world’s most advanced models of how
the brain thinks 73
Advanced Applied Thinking – a new model 73
2.1 Numeracy and mathematical thinking 81
2.1.1 Some diagnostic questions 81
2.1.2 The Mensa challenge 85
2.1.3 Workout: Numerical Thinking 89
2.2 The neuroscience: Creativity and creative thinking 105
2.2.1 Creative Thinking 105
2.2.2 Ethical Thinking 113
2.2.3 Workout: Lateral Thinking 119
iii
2.3 Advanced Applied Thinking: Metaphoric,
systemic and strategic 125
2.3.1 Metaphoric mapping – Metaphoric Thinking 126
2.3.2 Systems Thinking 127
2.3.3 Strategic Thinking 135
Summary 146
PART 3 Developing creative high intelligence and Advanced
Applied Thinking 149
3.1 The neuroscience: From genius to Advanced
Applied Thinking 151
3.1.1 High IQ and the neuroscience of
creative intelligence 151
3.1.2 Boosting your brain: a 10-day plan 159
3.1.3 Match your mind against Mensa 161
3.2 Developing creative intelligence: The 4S© Way 169
3.2.1 Applied Thinking 169
3.2.2 Applied Thinking: The steps to take to
get things done 171
3.2.3 Boost your brain power and your
Creative Intelligence the 4S© way 173
3.3 Workout: A fiendish 4S© workout for
Advanced Thinkers only 189
3.3.1 Warm-ups 189
3.3.2 Heavy lateral lifts 196
3.3.3 Sudoku, ladders, propellers – and the
world’s hardest crossword? 200
Final thoughts 229
Bright from the start: Parenting the brain – teaching
your child to think 229
Appendix 1 Answers, hints and explanations 235
Appendix 2 Do you think like a man (TMB) or like
a woman (TFB)? 277
Appendix 3 References and recommended reading 283
Appendix 4 20 brain-friendly family days out (or days in) 299
iv
Dedication
I dedicate this book to my family.
Firstly my wife, Gillian, for tolerating me for writing
books, along with a full-time job in the NHS; secondly my
eldest daughter, Ellis, who has just commenced her sixth
form years having done very well at her GCSEs; thirdly
my son, James, who is just starting his GCSEs and wants
to go into medicine as a career, and last but not least, my
youngest daughter, Holly, who still remains the baby of
our family but who is very caring and protective of other
people. Thanks for all your support and encouragement
and for putting up with a ‘grumpy dad’ at times!
Simon
I dedicate this book to Carolyn, and Danya.
Carolyn did not live to write her own books. She was
hit by a car when training for the London Marathon.
She died instantly. A great conceptual thinker, Carolyn
constantly demonstrated her capacity for Applied
Thinking by maintaining complex networks of close
relationships. Her children’s party games and reunion
trips were legendary. Carolyn’s concept of ‘The Match’
spawned the development of Early Years Education
and helped to build the largest single campus Teacher
Training Institute in the UK.
My beautiful daughter, Danya, is five years old. She
and her baby sister, Tanzeela, were both born between
the rock of their mother’s tumour and the hard place
of their mother’s backbone. Only the courage and pain
bearing of their mother, Fakhrun Nisa, has enabled
them to survive where Brilliana could not. Danya is
kind and clever, in mind and brain, as well as beautiful
in face and body. She still struggles between a rock
and a hard place. My heart hurts everyday that I fail to
protect her, and her adopted sister, Yandu.
Terry
v
Acknowledgements
Dr. Claire Bacha, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Group
Analyst. Claire was the prompt, foil and sounding board for much
that is original in this edition.
Tony Doherty, Director of Research at the School of African and
Oriental Studies, University of London, for his permission to build on
A Thoughtful Approach to the Practice of Management – the starting
point of subsequent research at the University of Central Lancashire,
with Roger Armstrong and Gilly McHugh, and later, with Peter
Ruddock and Jane Griffiths.
To Professor Peter Stokes at Chester, for his challenge and support.
To Professor Susan Greenfield, former Director of Royal Institute and
author of The Human Brain (1997) which was the starting point for
our neurochemical models of the thinking process.
To Gianni Iaverdino, restaurateur.
To generations of research students including Nickoletta, John,
Nadine, Simon, Jay, Marilena, Rachel, Tobyn, Eli, Marcus, Alicia, and
James.
vi
First thoughts: Beyond brain
training to Advanced Applied
Thinking
This book is for people who are, or who wish to become, leading
thinkers within their chosen field, or within their wider community.
In every area of endeavour, the gap is wide between followers and
leaders. It is necessary to have original ideas. But it is not sufficient.
You must be able to think out tactics and plans and put original
ideas into practice.
In the twenty-first century, Advanced Applied Thinkers are highly
rewarded. The twentieth century has bequeathed many practical
problems, e.g. obesity, inequality and young people who are
alienated, thoughtless, ‘mindless’ and unreasonable. Alongside these
problems, come opportunities. No longer do we need big muscles,
or even machine skills, to earn a good living. Information-based
economies need people who can think in ways that turn information
into knowledge on which profitable action can be taken. Fortunately
the thinking skills required to earn a good living are the same as the
thinking skills needed to live a good life.
This book is in three parts.
Part One helps you to understand how to build new and strong
connections between different parts of your brain, so that you can use
them in concert. You will learn how to increase the cognitive capacity
of different parts of your brain, and how to use different parts of
your brain in powerful combinations and sequence.
Part Two will help you to develop Advanced Thinking Skills. You
will need these Advanced Thinking Skills to take advantage of your
increased brain power. It is like doing an Advanced Driving Course
when you buy a high-performance car.
Part Three shows you how to develop creative high intelligence with
which to deploy your new skills in Advanced Applied Thinking.
vii
Each of the three parts of the book has three sections which will
introduce and explain the relevance of recent discoveries by
neuroscientists; explain how you can make use of these discoveries;
and give you a workout. Different kinds of workouts have been
designed to let you practise (and enjoy!) doing puzzles, solving
problems and carrying out thought experiments which have been
selected and designed by neuroscientists and philosophers.
Finally, the section ‘Final Thoughts’, asks, ‘If we do not help our children
to think, how can we expect them to be thoughtful? If we don’t help
them to reason, how can we expect their behaviour to be reasonable?’
This book builds on the success of our series on brain training for
Hodder Education, and our best selling books for Kogan Page on
Strategic Planning, Strategic Thinking and Strategic Leadership, the
latter nominated as Best Book on Leadership and Management, by
the British Institute of Management. This book is based on up-to-
date information about how your brain thinks and about the kind of
practical problems you need to solve, the decisions you need to take,
and plans you need to make, in order to live a good life and earn a
good living.
By working your way through puzzles and exercises which are based
on twenty-first-century problems, you will develop thinking skills
you need.
N.B. As with all lateral thinking or creative thinking puzzles, neural
escape paths will only be created by repeated myelination, so do
resist looking up answers to any puzzle you cannot solve. A problem
you cannot solve is a gift of an opportunity to expand the neural
pathways and connections in your brain. Share your struggle with
others, but do not give up by looking at the answers in Appendix 1.
viii
Part 1
The
make-up
of your
mind
From brain training
to Applied Thinking
1
1.1