TRAIN YOUR BRAIN INCREASE YOUR CREATIVITY

INTRODUCTIONIn years past, researchers maintained that creativity was higher in individuals who are right-brain thinkers. Known as brain lateralization, this theory maintains that the right brain lobe is more highly activated in left-handed individuals. Everything from divergent thinking, artistic streaks and quicker information processing was attributed to so-called right-brain thinkers. Modern-day researchers such as Rita Carter, author of "Mapping the Mind," believe that more important to the creative drive is level of communication between the two lobes of the brain. The corpus callosum, the part of the brain that connects the two lobes, is thicker in diameter in people who score highly on creativity tests. The thicker the corpus callosum, the more efficiently the brain synchronizes its activities. This idea, first published in 1988 by Joseph and Glenda Bogen in the journal for Psychiatric Clinics of North America, has gained increasing support by recent brain imaging technology. In other words, creativity is enhanced by an increased use of the whole brain.

• You will find some brain fitness workouts that can help your mind process information more quickly, and more efficiently, as well as the ability to perform multiple tasks at the same time. You can get help to concentrate more and increase your brain reflection speed; you will find simple but very effective brain training games and exercises like solving math problems to achieve greater mind fitness. You may be the smartest person in the world and you don’t even know it. If you're not the most intelligent person in the world yet, then, welcome to your gym!

• You Can also start taking your own incentives and give it a try for yourself. Just go through the PPT might be beneficial.

Brain Training

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Right Brain Exercises• To understand the basis for right brain exercises, it is important to

understand how each hemisphere of the brain works. The right brain, in general, is responsible for visual processing, big picture thinking, intuitive processing and processing ideas simultaneously. Doing right brain exercises will help enhance those functions. Conversely, since the left brain is the hemisphere that is analytical, it processes step by step and is verbally oriented. Left brain exercises would help boost those processes. A right brain exercise might entail performing tasks that stimulate visual usage, intuitive thinking, etc. Right brain exercises might be things like painting or drawing that use the right brain functions of visual processing.

Tips That you can include it in your activity

• Right brain exercises: GamesRight brain exercises would also include games that involve strategy or working through various tasks simultaneously. These games require that you take a look at things as a whole and at times think outside of logical deductions to achieve the goal.

• Right brain exercises: ActionBy doing right brain exercises only, we deprive our brains of balance. Research has shown that the overall brain works more efficiently if we not only work the side that is dominant for us, but spend some time working the less dominant parts.

The Left "Human" brain• The right brain is the "animal brain" and analyzes the

environment for the sights and sounds useful for survival. In essence, animals are almost 100% "right-brained." Humans have kept the animal talents on the right side, but have modified the left brain for language and tool use.

The following is a summary of talents found in the left brain. Each talent is a complex network of different processes beyond what is mentioned here, but injuries or strokes in these areas would result in serious loss of these specific talents.

• Lots of people favor the left brain. Exercises that affect the entire brain will improve both hemispheres equally. What sorts of left-brained things can be improved by cognitive skills training? Left-brained people tend to think logically, from the parts to the whole, and are able to put things together sequentially. They are the details people. Cognitive skills training improves memory — which is crucial to left-brained people, who often like to function and learn using facts and figures. A left-brainer may have a job that requires excellent processing skills, quick thinking and a great memory. All of these things can be strengthened or simply enhanced (if they're already strong) by cognitive skills training.

The corpus collosum is the part of your brain that connects the hemispheres. There is evidence that the two hemispheres "help" one another with various tasks. It stands to reason that training the whole brain will strengthen the right brain as well as the left, and will add to the thinker's depth of capacity. Sometimes, left-brained activities can be greatly enhanced by a right-brained perspective.

Tips

• Mental Exercises• Since the left side of your brain processes language and mathematics, puzzles or games in

those subjects will sharpen that hemisphere. When you try to solve a word puzzle, for example, electrical and chemical impulses travel among the neurons in the left hemisphere until you identify the answer. Games like Sudoku and crossword puzzles, logic brainteasers and mathematical word problems all exercise the left side of your brain. There are many books, websites and even smartphone apps to keep you well stocked with left-brain puzzles.

• Physical Exercises• Exercising the right side of your body wakes up the left side of your brain. Even writing with

your right hand is helpful. While yoga postures and breathing methods typically strive to balance both sides of the body and mind at once, the practice of Surya Bhedana Pranayama, or Single Nostril Breath, stimulates the left side of the brain. For this practice, block your left nostril and inhale through the right nostril and then block your right nostril and exhale through the left for a few cycles.

• Music• Teppo Sarkamo led the 2008 study entitled "Music Listening Enhances Cognitive Recovery and

Mood after Middle Cerebral Artery Stroke, published in the journal Brain. The research group randomly split 60 stroke patients into three groups, one that listened to music. The music group recovered more verbal memory than the other two groups. Agnes Chan headed a 2003 study that showed children with musical training developed stronger verbal memory than their peers without such education. To boost your left-brain, take up an instrument or just tune into your favorite song.

More Tips• Writing down your ideas is a good way to encourage and increase

creativity. You can keep an "idea journal." Do this regularly, and you'll notice that you often start having more ideas while you are writing. Mediocre ideas may normally be forgotten, but by writing them down, your subconscious may work on them, and transform them into something very creative.

• You can also encourage greater creativity in yourself by putting creative ideas into practice. If you paint or write, for example, try anything new. Even just driving a different route to work to see if it is quicker can help. The point is to get you mind working outside of its regular patterns.

• The "Assumption Challenging" and "Random Presentation" techniques are two classic creative problem solving tools among dozens more. Training your brain to habitually use these, and providing it with a little encouragement, can really increase your creativity.

• Language Sounds

Sound input in the human left brain is specialized for discriminating the sounds of language. As children grow in the first few months, their sound patch in the temporal lobe is hearing the sounds of people talking, and remembering that certain sound patterns seem to always match certain objects and actions.

• Vision and Reading

ision in the human left brain is specialized for reading. The left brain learns to see arrangements of lines we call alphabet letters.

For example... • The visual cortex looks for simple things such as " l o / " • Then the brain learns to perceive arrangements of lines as letters " d b p q v " • Then the brain learns to perceive arrangements of letters as words

• Effect of Classical Music on the Brain• Classical music affects the brain’s organization and abilities, through its

melody and rhythm. The rhythm raises the level of serotonin produced in your brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, involved in the transmission of nerve impulses that helps maintaining joyous feelings. When the brain produces serotonin, tension is eased. In fact depression is a consequence of the scarce production of this hormone. Serotonin is released when the brain is “positively shocked”. For instance: if we look at a splendid painting, smell a delicious scent, feel an extraordinary sensation, eat something delicious or listen to some charming music, then the brain lets off a certain amount of serotonin which arouses and maximizes pleasant feelings. Music’s rhythm can also stimulate other natural cadencies of the body, resembling the heartbeat, or the Alfa-rhythm of the brain, and this effect is used to counter the development of clinical depression. The melody instead, is the “sparkle” that catalyses the creative process in our minds.b

Drawing Exercise• By means of various techniques we can

stimulate the right side of the brain and search the integration of the two hemispheres, balancing the use of our potentialities.

• One of these techniques consists of making some given drawings, in a non conventional way, so that our left hemisphere should consider them as a boring task and give up exerting total control, and then leaving in charge the right hemisphere, that "enjoys" the exercise.

Foods

• There are many foods which improve brain function in some way. A diet heavy in omega-3 fatty acids, for example, can help keep the blood vessels of the brain clear of blockages and allow nerve cells to function at a high level. So you may want to eat your fish twice a week (A major source of omega-3s) or take a supplement.

• Good Brain Foods

• Avocados Bananas Beef, lean Brewer's yeast Broccoli Brown rice Brussels sprouts Cantaloupe Cheese Chicken Collard greens Eggs Flaxseed oil

Legumes Milk Oatmeal Oranges Peanut butter Peas Potatoes Romaine lettuce Salmon Soybeans Spinach Tuna Turkey Wheat germ Yogurt