8 Ways To "Open" Your Mind

8 Ways to "Open" Your Mind

The human brain is the most complex information processing system we know.

The human brain is the most complex information processing system we know. It is designed to have a number of useful features, but at the same time it has many disadvantages and weaknesses. The problem is that it is not accompanied by instructions for use. We have to discover the "tracks" ourselves. However, if there are some who know more about our minds, they are neuroscientists and psychologists. In the following pages, some of the best experts explain how the human brain performs its most important basic functions, while at the same time revealing the ways in which we can make it work in the "maximum". See how you can improve your attention and memory, how you can become more rational and creative,

1. How to increase your attention

Almost all the useful features of our brain start with attention. Attention determines what we are aware of at all times, so controlling it is probably the most important thing the brain has to do.
In order to understand what is going on in the world around us, we need to filter and expel almost everything by focusing solely on what is relevant. In addition, focused attention is essential to learning or memorizing. So next, if one can strengthen one's ability to pay attention, one can improve on almost everything.
Simply put, the brain has two systems of attention. One, the "bottom-up" system, automatically turns the perception to potentially important information such as moving objects, sudden noises or sensations of touch. This system is fast, unconscious and always on (at least when we are awake).
The other, the "top-down" system, is the voluntary, focused attention that "zooms in" on anything we want to think about and, hopefully, stay in it as long as it takes to get the job done. This is the kind of attention that is useful to perform tasks that require concentration.
Unfortunately, distractions occur both as a "defect" and as an inherent feature of the design. Top-down attention requires effort, so it is at risk of losing its focus or being abruptly interrupted by the bottom-up system.
The good news is that we can "tweak" our attention settings to stay more focused. In addition to reducing bottom-up distractions by eliminating e.g. Nile Levy , a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, suggests that we give our brains more "work" by alerting them by email .
Ms. Levy's research has shown that better control of top-down attention is not achieved by reducing the number of incoming information but by increasing it. The theory of load that he has developed argues that once the brain reaches its limit on sensory processing, it can no longer "capture" anything, including distractions.
This seems to work both in terms of distractions and the "journey" of the mind in daydreams, he says. In real life, he suggests trying to add visual "touches" to a work that we have to do to get it to attract more attention, but without making it more difficult: for example, to put a colored frame around a white document and highlight in purple the part in which we are working. He adds that the same effect is achieved with all the senses, so choosing to work in a place where there is little "background" noise can also help us.
According to other indications, something else that can help is cognitive practice. Researchers working with people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and brain injuries have found that cognitive practice combined with non-invasive magnetic stimulation of the brain can improve focus on a work that requires prolonged attention.
Extensive studies are currently being conducted on this topic and the first results seem to show that the right kind of brain training can help anyone in general.
In anticipation of the final conclusions, the best option is to learn to relax but in the right way. It has been found that for those who have been meditating for years, the attention-grabbing parts of the brain are denser, while other studies have shown that performance on attention tests improves after a short "lesson" of meditation. So learning to concentrate better may be as simple as learning to stop time and concentrate on something special.

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2. Be a rational and rational being

We like to consider ourselves rational and rational beings. And indeed we can be - but not without effort.
Logical thinking requires us to behave like a microprocessor, to perform step-by-step tasks based on information that uses the rules of logic. This doesn't come naturally to most people, we need external guidance to learn it and long training to be able to say we own it. Even then, however, we often find it difficult to maintain a purely rational view of things.
As it turns out, there is a nugget of truth in the popular belief that "left brain equals logic." Illustrative studies have shown that the left frontal cortex is necessary to make logical lines of thought, and many times this does not require signals from the right cortex.
But when there is a conflict between what seems logical and the beliefs we have already formed, the right side of the frontal cortex intervenes to help us dispel the confusion. Unfortunately, the right hemisphere usually wins. Studies have shown that when new information collides with existing beliefs, our brain does everything to keep its beliefs intact rather than revising them.
Another surprise is that, contrary to popular belief, emotions are not necessarily the enemy of logic. People who have been damaged in the prefrontal cortex that processes emotions have difficulty making any decisions, especially when there is no reasonable advantage in either option.

So embracing our not-so-logically instinctive feelings about our decisions may ultimately help us make more rational choices. But not always: other studies have shown that strong emotions can interfere with rational decision-making, especially when it comes to people we love.

Aside from hard work - and an appreciation of the role that beliefs and emotions can play - is there anything else we can do to make more sense?

The Vinont Gkoel , cognitive psychologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, says that a little electricity in the head maybe one day it can help us. His team recently used a similar approach to reinforce creative thinking and, he points out, "one can imagine the same technique being used to enhance our ability to reason logically.". At the moment, however, there is no shortcut. Practice, as he emphasizes, is currently the best option. Recent studies have shown that a few months of practice in logical reasoning, as part of a prerequisite test for admission to the Law School in the United States, increased the number of connections between the frontal and parietal lobes, as well as between the two hemispheres. The important thing is that without regular practice the effect is almost certain to fade a few months after the end of the course.

3. Make your memory work

Like attention, functional memory is one of the most important "front line" functions of the brain. Everything you know and remember, whether it's an incident, a skill or an exciting event, started their journey to storage by going through your working or functional memory.

But functional memory is much more than just a warehouse for long-term memories. They have described it as the "rough" notebook of the brain: the place where information is stored and handled. If you do anything that requires effortless, focused thinking, use your functional memory.

In the 1970s, Alan Bandelli and Graham Heaths of York University in the UK developed a model that resonated with them to explain how the system works. The key factor is executive control, which "sets up the show" by focusing our attention on the relevant information.

It also triggers "slave" systems to get jobs. One holds up to four pieces of visual information at a time, another can memorize about two seconds of sound, especially from word of mouth, which it reproduces over and over again (consider mentally repeating a phone number while searching for a pen). . The third is intermediate memory, which adds relevant information from long-term memory.

One weakness of this model is that the functional memory does not occupy a distinct area of   the brain which we can actively monitor in a brain tomograph. For this reason, some cognitive neuroscientists have argued that it may not be a separate system but is simply a part of long-term memory that we are focusing on at the moment.

Whatever it is, functional memory is a "standardized" feature of the human brain, but some people have better functional memory than others. The ability of functional memory is a better indication than the IQ for academic success, so making the most of it is useful.

The good news is that the system can probably be upgraded. Some studies have shown that exercise programs that target brain function specifically can improve - in fact, some "exercise packages" are on the market. However, it is not clear whether these make us better at anything other than functional memory tests.

Cognitive neuroscientist Jason Chain of Temple University in Philadelphia, USA, who is studying functional memory, says there appear to be signs of improvement in other cognitive skills, although any changes are very small.

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4. Creativity on demand

The Tz. K. Rowling has said that the idea for Harry Potter came to her mind while she was stuck waiting for a train that was too late. We all have to remember similar - though probably less lucrative - moments of "graduation", where an inspiration suddenly appears out of nowhere. But where do these inspirations come from? And is there a way to order them?

Experiments made by John Kounios, a neuroscientist at the University of Drexel in Philadelphia, suggest that the reason we are not all millionaire writers is that some brains are better at being creative than others. Measurements with electroencephalography performed while the volunteers were not thinking about anything special revealed, of course, higher levels of activity in the right hemisphere, in the temporal lobe, in people who solved problems using more insight than logic. Mr Kounios says recent studies suggest that this feature of the brain may be inherited, but even if you happen to have a more focused, less creative brain, there are many general tips on how to put it in the "creative" mode.

Although boring, the first thing you need to do is lay the foundation for building a good information warehouse so that the unconscious has something to work on. Studies of subconscious or subconscious learning have probably frozen the idea that knowledge can pass to the brain without any conscious effort, so it focuses on the details of the problem until all the data has been stored safely. At this stage anything that enhances focus, such as caffeine, can help.

Once you've taken care of the above, it's time to cultivate a more relaxed, positive mood by taking a break to do something completely different - like watching some fun cat videos. Studies in which volunteers watched either a comedy or a thriller before new ideas came to them showed that a relaxed and pleasant mood is a better "conduit" for ideas than a mood with tension and anxiety. In addition, it seems that it is good to "lower" the intensity of the focus a bit and the best way to do that is to look for ideas when your brain is too tired to focus accurately.

Mental exhaustion may be a more realistic condition than relaxation when you have an important deadline ahead of you, but if the ideas still refuse to come, maybe one day there will be an easier solution. Studies with cerebral stimulation, in which activity was enhanced in the right temporal lobe and suppressed in the left, increased problem-solving performance by 40%. Perhaps the stressed creators of the future may be able to wear a "thinking helmet" to make their ideas roll.

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5. Think like a child to learn faster

Learning is something our brain does by nature. In fact, it does so every minute we wake up about a month before we are born. This is the process by which we obtain and store useful (and useless) information and skills. Can we make it more effective?

The answer lies in what happens in our brains as we learn. As information is processed, the brain creates and destroys connections by developing and enhancing synapses that connect neurons to their neighbors or weakening them. When we are actively learning, creating new connections is superior to destroying old ones. Studies in rats have shown that this process of recycling can take place very quickly, within hours of learning a skill, such as getting into a hole to get a reward. In some parts of it, especially the hippocampus, the brain develops new brain cells as it learns.

But once a circuit is installed, it needs to be used to establish itself. This is largely done through myelination - the process by which a circuit that has been excited several times develops a coating of adipose membrane. This membrane increases the conductivity by making the circuit work more efficiently.

So what is the best way to learn something and keep it? The answer won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who's been to school: focus on that, put your functional memory to work, and then, a little later, actively try to remember it.

The Alan Banteli from the University of York in Britain says that a good idea To test yourself in this way do so because your brain enhances the new connection. It also suggests trying to consciously link new information to what you already know. This stabilizes the connection to the brain and reduces the chances of it being lost due to its reduced use.

The process of learning continues throughout life, so why is it so much harder to learn when we become adults? The good news is that there doesn't seem to be a normal reason for this slowdown. On the contrary, it seems that this has a lot to do with the fact that we just spend less time learning new things and when we do we do not do it with the same strong mix of enthusiasm and attention that an average child does.

Part of the problem seems to be that adults know too much. Research by Gabrielle Woolf of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas has shown that adults tend to learn a physical skill, such as hitting a golf ball, focusing on the details of the movement. However, the children are not obscured by the details but are experimenting with making the ball go where they want. When Mrs. Woolf taught adults to learn more like children, they learned new skills much faster.

The same seems to be true of learning information. As adults we have a huge stock of mentally short paths that allow us to "jump" the details. But we still have the ability to learn new things in the same way as children, which suggests that if we could resist the temptation to "cut off the road," we would probably learn much more. A more "tried and tested" method is to stay active. As you grow older, you may lose your brain tissue, but this may be largely related to how little we run from here to there in relation to young people. With a little physical exercise, the brain can rejuvenate. In one study, 40 minutes of exercise three times a week for a year increased the size of the hippocampus - an area that is crucial for learning and memory. They also improved connectivity throughout the brain, making it easier for new knowledge to be established.

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6. Draw the power of knowledge

One of the most useful features of the brain is the ability to absorb pieces of information and make connections with each other. Knowledge is really power: if it is little it can be dangerous, while the more we know the better equipped we are to deal with life.

But what exactly is knowledge? How is data stored, how is it organized, and how is it retrieved when we need it?

Knowledge is obviously based on memory - especially the type of memory that stores general information about objects, places, events and individuals and which is known as conceptual memory. This is the part of the memory that knows that Paris is the capital of France, which is a constitutional democracy in Western Europe - but not the part that stores the memories of a weekend you spent there.

Knowledge is not so much about what information you store as how you organize it to create a rich and detailed understanding of the world that connects everything you know.

Viewing a dog, for example, automatically activates other sections of information about dogs: how they look, how they smell, how they sound, and how they move, the fact that they are domesticated wolves, the names of similar dogs you know, and your feelings for dogs.

How the brain achieves this titanic feat is anything but clear. A recent suggestion is that it has a "hub" that puts "labels" with categories on everything we know and encounter, allowing us to connect things to each other.

In 2003, Tim Rogers , a cognitive psychologist currently at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed the anterior temporal lobe as a node. The anterior temporal lobe has been severely damaged in people with conceptual dementia, who gradually lose knowledge of the meaning of words and objects but retain their skills and autobiographical memories. Experiments since then have supported this idea - when the anterior temporal lobe is temporarily blocked by a small electromagnetic pulse, individuals lose the ability to name objects and understand the meaning of words.

The good news is that there seems to be no limit to the amount of knowledge that can fit into our brains. As far as we know, no one ever ran out of storage space.

However, it seems that you may know more than you should. The Michael Ramskar by the University of Tubingen in Germany believes that anyone who lives long enough eventually reaches this point only because of the knowledge that has been gathered in a lifetime. He argues that cognitive abilities slow down with age not because the brain wears out but because it is so full. And so - like an overly full and used hard drive - it takes more time for everything to stand out.

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7. Can you increase your IQ?

Intelligence has always been difficult to quantify, and one important reason for this is that it seems to involve most of the brain, so it's almost certain that it's not "one thing." Nevertheless, scores on different types of IQ tests have long shown that people who perform extremely well - or poorly - in one of them appear to perform similarly in all. This can be summed up in the fact that there may be a single factor of general intelligence (or "g") that seems to be related to academic success, income, health and longevity.

So having more intelligence is clearly good, but where does it come from? For the most part, the answer seems to be genetic. In 1990, the first studies in twin brothers showed that performance tests on identical twins who had grown up separately looked much more like each other than those of non-identical twins who grew up together. Since then, some genes have been linked to the IQ, but all of them seem to have very little effect, and the genes involved should actually be in the thousands.

This does not mean that the environment does not play a role, at least in childhood. As the brain develops, everything from nutrition and education to stimuli play a huge role in the development of brain structures that are necessary for intelligent thinking. Children with poor nutrition and poor education may never meet their genetic potential.

But even for educated and well-fed children, the effects of the environment fade with time. In adults, genes are responsible for 60% -80% of differences in intelligence tests compared to less than 30% in young children. Like it or not, we are becoming more and more like our close relatives as we get older.

So if genes play such a big role, is there anything adults can do to improve their IQ? The good news is that a kind of intelligence continues to improve throughout our lives. Most researchers distinguish between fluid intelligence, which measures the ability to think logically, learn, and locate patterns, from crystallized intelligence, which is the sum of all the knowledge we have acquired so far. Liquid intelligence slows down with age but crystallized intelligence does not. So as we begin to get a little slower as we get older, we can be calm that we are still becoming smarter.

8. Adjust your watch to be genius

The mind is a volatile being - sometimes it's sharp like a razor and others are tangled like a tangle. At least to some extent these shifts can be explained by the fluctuations in circadian rhythms, which means that, at least in theory, if you do the right kind of work at the right time of day, your life should be a little smoother.

The exact time period of these fluctuations varies by about two hours between morning and night, so it is difficult to give advice that suits everyone. However, there are some rules that are worth keeping in mind, no matter what your natural waking time.

One idea is not to do things that require absolute concentration within the first two hours after waking up. Depending on how much sleep you have, it may take from 30 minutes to four hours for the sleep deprivation to go away - also known as morning sickness. However, if you want to think creatively, the blur can be good (see 5).

While hard work can't wait, the good news is that research has backed up what most of us already know: a dose of caffeine helps drive out sleep deprivation and get our work done.

Another tip is to synchronize your mental exercise with the fluctuations in your body temperature. Studies that have measured differences in everything from attention and verbal reasoning to reaction times have shown that when our internal temperature drops below 37 degrees Celsius, the brain is not at its best.

In this measure, the worst time to do anything that requires thought is, as expected, between midnight and 6 p.m. Almost equally bad time is after noon, from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m., and this is more related to body temperature than food - studies in people who have not eaten or eaten very little show the same problem. In general, the best times to get to work are from mid-morning until noon and then again from 4 p.m. until 10 p.m.

However, there are ways to fool the system. Studies have shown that changes in body temperature and alertness can also work independently of the internal clock, so a little well-planned physical exercise at a time or a hot shower can work wonders.

Nevertheless, it would be good to leave the competitive sports for the end of the day. Studies have shown that reaction times and eye-hand coordination gradually become better over the course of the day, reaching their peak around 8 p.m.

After that you have time for a little more focused energy before the body cools down, the brain slows down and there is nothing more we can do with it than to dream.