Creative
Visualization:
Your
visuo-spatial ability is in fact many different
kinds of ability, ranging from picking
out details, to perceiving the arrangement
of those details into patterns, to fitting
those patterns into a knowledge base so
you know what to do with them.
Like
your other faculties, your visuo-spatial intelligence
can be maintained or left to deteriorate. Visual
close-ups can challenge you to project those details
onto a larger pattern, thus exercising your right-brain-dependent
holistic-imaging skills. Familiar patterns with
a subtle detail or two out of place can test your
attention to objective minutiae. And tasks demanding
mental rotation of three-dimensional visual objects
can be a real brain-buster, until you learn to
get the hang of it.
Memory & Learning:
Memory
is a partner in developing all other mental skills. The
key to learning is the brain’s ability to convert
a current experience into code and store it so, later,
the experience can be recalled for your benefit. The
brain codes some kinds of inputs from the senses permanently
with no conscious effort on your part. It can also store
other kinds of data because you consciously pass that
data through a rehearsal loop repeatedly — which,
incidentally, can also take place during sleep.
Executive
Planning:
The
front part of the cortex (the wrinkled outer covering
of the brain) allows you to foresee goals and take
the steps necessary to execute your plans. As the
most recently-evolved part of the brain, the frontal
lobes also house the most fragile parts of our identity,
and support the faculties that require the most conscious
effort and practice if you want to maintain them.
The
flip side of the fragility of executive functions
is that they are also the most malleable and improvable
with practice. The best way to be an expert at organizing
information and using it to your advantage is to
work at it. Because your frontal-lobe functions are
so consciously accessible, this is an easier matter — as
long as you’re willing to make the effort — than,
say, learning to adjust your brain-stem-governed
body rhythms. |
|
Language & Math:
Our
acquisition of language in infancy is so instinctual
and automatic that we sometimes take it for granted.
Recent evidence shows us that a life-long willingness
to push the envelope of our linguistic abilities helps
keep our brain cell’s dendritic branches from
atrophying, and may even help prevent Alzheimer’s.
Almost
all of us fall within the same range of basic mathematical
ability. Why, then, do so many of us avoid mental
arithmetic calculations and math-games with the
excuse that we’re just “not good at
math”? But those of us who think of math
as something we’re simply not good at tend
to leave the mental calculations to others. By
allowing ourselves to settle into this kind of
pattern, we allow our mathematical acuity, and
general mental alertness, to slip. This is, in
fact, exactly why most of us who really are “not
good at math” have become this way — because
we’ve become comfortable thinking of ourselves
this way.
Emotional
Response:
Neuroscience
is revealing the loci in the brain of our emotional
faculties, and the neural pathways linking emotion
to the “intellectual” functions of
the mind. Emotion is intimately linked to cognition,
and to the maintenance of the health of our brain
cells as well as our body’s immune system.
Social
Interaction:
Social
interaction is a skill you may not think of as “mental,” but
you really can’t ignore it if you want to boost
your brainpower and maximize the effectiveness of
your other mental skills. Some of the most interesting
recent brain research has shown us ways that social
skills are tied to all the other traditional measures
of intelligence. A person may have a razor-sharp
logical acumen and yet be unable to use that skill
to make logical life decisions, or even to engage
in productive social interactions. Social interaction
is also one of the three pillars of a so-called
“enriched environment,” along with
mental stimulation and physical exercise. That’s
the kind of environment that serves to keep all
cognitive skills sharp, to boost the production
of new brain cells, and even to lower Alzheimer’s
risk. |
