Learn

Brainpower Newsletter

There is a new page on how to develop your learning skills, and a few other interesting items in this weeks newsletter.

To Learn effectively and efficiently requires some basic learning skills. In other words, we need to learn how to learn. Here are some ways to develop those skills.

1. Identify what is essential. This is one of the most important learning skills to develop. If you are learning to drive a car, getting used to the steering wheel, gas pedal and brake pedal are essential, right? All the rest can come later.

Knowing the essentials helps you make sense of all the rest. If you are studying economics, for example, you need to understand supply and demand. Then it is easier to understand how good weather can depress commodity prices, or how government spending can drive prices up.

How do you identify what is most essential? One simple way is to...

Continued here:
http://www.increasebrainpower.com/learning-skills.html

A recent study has shown that there is a different pattern of brain activity leading up to moments of creative inspiration in problem solving, compared to more methodical solutions. When subjects prepared to have an "aha!" solution, brain imaging showed a pattern indicating that they were focusing inwardly, and more able to switch there thinking to new areas, and possibly silencing irrelevant thoughts.

The problems were displayed on a video screen. When mental preparation led to sudden insights, there was more brain activity in temporal lobe areas associated with conceptual processing and cognitive control. More methodical solutions showed more activity in the visual cortex. Researchers took this to indicate that this deliberate problem solving involved external focus of attention on the video screen.

You may have heard me say that creative insight is more likely with work than with waiting. This study and others may lead to learning exactly what kind of work to do, or how to put people in the most creative frame of mind to solve problems. I'll be reporting more on this in future newsletters.

Of course, as often happens in science, the research is mostly confirming what has been known and used for centuries. Methodical problem solving is different from sudden insight? No big surprise there. Don't expect the research to disprove many of the techniques for creative problem solving either. It will more likely just show why they work.

Research like this is very important, and really may lead to new ways to think. However, don't hesitate to use what works for you before it is "proven." Man was thinking long before science existed.

- An elephant's brain is about six times as large as a human brain. In relation to body size, however, humans have the largest brain of all the animals (about 2% of body weight).

-Julius Caesar was the first to encode communications, using what has become known as the Caesar Cipher.

I arrive once in every second, once in every minute and once in every year. What am I?

(The answer is at the bottom of the page)

I can't keep coming up with more riddles and brain teasers on my own. If anyone wants to contribute, send me your favorites. Just respond to this email. Thank you. - Steve

(Many subscribers are not aware of all the pages of the site. This section is a reminder of useful pages you may have missed. You can just ignore this part if you have read the following pages.)

Brainstorming Pages

Want some good information on brainstorming? The site has six or seven pages on the topic, by myself and other authors, which are collected together in on the introductory page called "Articles On BrainStorming." You can learn more and visit the index page here:

http://increasebrainpower.com/articles-on-brainstorming.html

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Until next time,

Steve

www.IncreaseBrainpower.com

Riddle answer: The letter "e" (sEcond, minutE, yEar).

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