Testing two-thousand students, three had serious trouble creating mental-movies. We care because creative-imagery is an essential element in both the Einstein Peg and Link memory system. No pictures no doubling of your memory.

Our brain thinks using pictures; attention and concentration require the ability to use mental-imagery. When you are evaluating (choosing) a go or no-go decision about people, places and things, your brain goes into a mental picture mode.

Where in the brain do mental-movies take place? Answer: the occipital lobe (back of the head); visualization is a right-brain ability. Some scientists refer to the Precuneus as our specific visuo-spatial imagery area; it is also involved in episodic memory retrieval and elements of consciousness.

So What

If you have mental visualization (creative imagery) difficulties we have an easy solution you can implement in two-minutes. Do this exercise daily for two-minutes for 21 days and it creates its own neuropathway and becomes a habit.

Shut your right-eye and see exclusively through your Left-Eye. Visual follow your left-arm creating an Air-Infinity-Symbol. Make this reclining 8 horizontally move left-to-right about eighteen-inches. Let us review: you see for two-minutes exclusively through your left eye moving your head left-to-right and right-to-left, following the Air-Infinity symbol (also called lemniscates) produced by your left hard and arm.

Why

Your left-eye vision is activated by your Right-Hemisphere (brain); vision occurs in the back of your head, specifically at the Occipital Lobe. When you use you left hand and arm to produce the sleeping 8 infinity sign it balances your left and right hemispheres. We call it getting in-sync.

In two-minutes, you fully trigger your creative imagery skills. It is a great accomplishment because it improves your Peg and Link memory systems up to 39%. You will also discover an improvement in your ability to pay attention and concentrate when you are studying. This mirrors tripling your speed reading skills for powerful learning strategies.

Profound Fact: your brain remembers pictures (images) it has seen or created when it begins to think and analyze. The better your creative imaging skills the better your thinking strategies of deductive and inductive reasoning.

How Do We Know The use of fMRIs (functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery) scans indicate an increased blood flow into the structures of the right-brain when seeing exclusively through your left-eye and doing the horizontal Infinity-Symbol movements.

The Hippocampus

The key to learning and memory improvement is located in our hippocampus. This Limbic System brain structure lays down new permanent memories. When new neurons are growing in your hippocampus (neurogenesis), you are on top of your game cognitively. Aging can produce a reduction in new neuronal growth in your hippocampus and memory is reduced.

Use it or Lose it

Some scientists in 2006 have theorized the incidence of Alzheimers Disease occurs in folks who do not read or learn regularly. Watching TV and playing video games do not make us for a lack of cognitive activity.

Dr. Scott A. Small at Columbia University Medical Center produces research appearing in The Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, that aerobic exercise triggers the growth of neurons in the hippocampus. The fMRI reports an increase in blood flow in the Dentate Gyrate, a part of the hippocampus.

The natural reduction of exercise with aging not only atrophies muscles, but brain neurons. Three months of regular exercise produces an improvement in hippocampal activity. Doing the exercise will not get you to the Olympics, but it will help avoid Alzheimers and some believe reduce the incidence of Parkinsons.

Hierarchy and Ritual

Our oldest brain layer is called the Reptilian Complex. It consists of immediate reactions we call instincts for survival and self-preservation. Some of these instincts are territorial, aggression and cooperation, sex, the automatic functions of our body and mind (vegetative organs), hierarchy, ritual and survival.

Our ancient ancestors who lived or died by hunting and gathering had a rudimentary reasoning brain and lived based on a ranking and pecking order. They had specific rituals of behavior leading to social cooperation instead of killing each other off. We know or our kind would have not survived.

Chimps and our early ancestors used their sense of how to behave in a social organization to survive. Today, hierarchy is the respect we give for those of higher rank in our society. Do you speak to your boss the same way as your fellow associate?

Celebrities in our society such as star athletes and successful actors are in a higher level of hierarchy (ranking), than the rest of us. How about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the old Rockefellers? Is our respect the beginner of morality?

Fairness and tit-for-tat (reciprocity) is based on the need for teamwork on the hunt. Reconciling after arguments instead of murder produces a social environment for raising families and personal survival. My cave is better than yours is based on our instinct for aggression and the emotions of our Limbic System.

The addition of our neocortex (thinking brain) is an attempt to overcome our aggressive instincts and feelings.

Endwords

Speedlearning strategies are rituals that instill new skill behaviors that support success in learning and memory. The PhD initials after your name indicate your standing in your social hierarchy. Both rituals and hierarchy have survival value.

Consider the social value in tripling your reading speed, and doubling your memory. How would it help your career or your child in school, to read-and remember three-books, articles and reports in the time others can hardly finish one?

See ya,

H. Bernard Wechsler
http://www.speedlearning.org