The Mind’s Unknown Potential – Inspired by the book ‘Mindmapping’ by Joyce Wycoff.

The mind is revered as another vast unchartered frontier – one closer to home than that travelled by the Starship Enterprise of Star Trek fame. The dimensions of this frontier are almost as overwhelming as space. There are billions of nerve cells with an almost inconceivably large number of possible connections and unlimited storage capacity.

Richard Restak, M.D. in his book The Brain, states ‘the human brain can store more information than all the libraries in the world.’

In The Three-Pound Universe, Judith Hooper and Dick Teresei compare the brain to the universe. They state, ‘In fact, it is the known universe… everything we know…is experienced in our brains. Without our brains…nothing will exist for us.’ In other words, it creates our universe.

Pattern recognition
The brain is frequently compared to the computer and often pales in comparison, as it apparently cannot compare to its speed and power.

However, as knowledge of both the brain and computers increased, scientists realized that a computer was not a just a bigger and better brain. There were things the brain could do that computers couldn’t seem to do at all.

Wycoff goes on to quote the example of going to a high school reunion 20 years later and running into Harry, who is now bald and 30 pounds heavier. Chances are that you will still recognise him, but the computer probably would not.

Your recognition of Harry is based on pattern recognition. You can recognise a song by just hearing the first few notes. This is pattern completion. If we see a word mizspeld, we still understand what it says. This is pattern correction. Most of this is almost impossible for a computer.

GROK
Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a strange land introduced the word ‘grok’. It means to understand everything completely all at once. Its pattern is understood completely as a whole. To date computers cannot grok.

Ambiguity

Can you see the old lady as well as the young lady in this drawing?
Most people eventually begin to see two patterns, an old woman and a young woman. The brain can switch between the two until it decides which pattern it wants to use. It has the ability to think visually.

Mind as a Jelly Dish
Edward de Bono, a brain guru, uses an analogy that describes how a creative idea is born.
Imagine a jelly dish filled with jelly that is fully set. Imagine pouring a teaspoon of hot water on it.
If you throw off the water, you will be left with the grooves. After doing this many times, you will be left with a network of grooves.
If you now pour new water into the jelly dish, it will naturally settle in the grooves. This is how the brain works. New information will naturally fit into existing knowledge and structures.
By Mind Mapping® these structures, you automatically document these channels for new information to attach to.
Even if you only pour a little water, or if you pour water outside of the channels, the water will begin to settle into the channels. This is the brain’s amazing ability to complete and correct information entering the brain.
Now imagine tilting the dish until water flows from one channel into the next. New connections are formed. This is when creativity occurs in the brain.
The Mind Map® is your Jelly Dish! It will allow the brain to make new connections in ways that were not previously possible, making it the powerful brain tool that it is.

One Brain or Two?

In the early 1960s, Roger Sperry, an experimental psychologist performed experiments with people suffering from epilepsy based on split-brain theories. He and his associate, Michael S. Gazzaniga won a Nobel Prize for their studies. The brain was split using a special technique along the corpus collosum, which connects the brain’s hemispheres.

The result was amazing. When an apple was flashed so that it could only be seen by the right visual field (thus the left brain hemisphere), the patient could immediately identify and name the apple.
When shown to the left visual field (the right brain hemisphere), the person could not find the words to name the apple. But when asked to identify and retrieve the apple, it could easily be done by the left hand even though it could not find the words to do so.
The specialisations of each hemisphere were gradually revealed.

• Left Brain – Language, Logic, numbers, sequence, details, linear
• Right Brain – Images, rhythm, music, imagination, colour, whole picture, patterns, emotions

This gave rise to the terms left-brained and right-brain people, which have become almost clichéd with creative, artistic people being referred to as right brained and dull, analytical people as left-brained.
The modern schooling and education systems tend to favour the left-brained and often view the right-brained as being scatter brained and disorganised.

This is unfortunately a misconception as normal people actually use both sides of the brain. Both traits are critical to our thinking processes. By strengthening the ‘weaker side’ we can achieve maximum results.
In many cases it is the right brain that needs to be stimulated as modern western education is largely left brain focused. Education traditionally teaches us to find and regurgitate the ‘right’ answer. Little opportunity is given to exercise imagination and alternate thinking skills. Creativity comes about by interaction between the two hemispheres rather than from the right hemisphere alone. This is called whole brain skills.

Memory…How much?
Peter Russell in The Brain Book states that Xerxes could recall the names of all 100 000 men in his army. Cardinal Mezzofanti knew 70 to 80 languages.
So why don’t I remember the name of the person just introduced to me?
There are actually two parts of the memory process – storage and recall. Many researches now believe that we store everything that we experience in our lives. Although this seems physically impossible, the hologram theory of memory makes this belief seem a little more feasible.

The brain, according to Karl Pribram of Stanford Medical School, stores information similar to that of the machine that is used to create holograms. A hologram is a 3-D image generated by splitting a laser beam with a part going to a photographic plate and part going to an image, which is then reflected onto the plate. The incredible thing about holograms is that the image is included in each part of the photographic plate. If the plate is broken, the whole image can be reproduced by any part of the plate. The image is actually distributed throughout the plate through the storage of waves.

Pribram worked briefly with Karl Lashley, who was looking for the exact location of memory in the brain called an engram. Lashley performed experiments on rats. He trained rats to run through mazes and then removed parts of their brain. Regardless of which part he removed, the memory remained.
Memory, it was concluded, is like a hologram, stored throughout the brain with unlimited storage capacity. According to Russell, one cubic centimetre of a photographic hologram can store 10 billion bits of information. The human brain is 1500 times as large. He estimates that the human memory capacity is in the order of a quadrillion bits of information!

Some fascinating memory studies have been done on ordinary people. For example:

• A brick layer could accurately describe a specific brick he laid, even though he laid 2 000 bricks a day.
• Mothers and children under hypnosis described the moment of birth with remarkable similarity.
• Many cases of hypnosis revealed the enormous memory storage ability of the brain.

If we are storing everything that happens to us, why can’t we recall it? The primary reason is interference. Lack of clear-cut associations and patterns prevents the search process from finding the information. This causes the retrieval keys to be lost.

There are four primary tools for improving memory recall and learning:

1. Repetition – The standard tool of many education systems. Rote learning may work, but is definitely not the most effective method.
2. Association/Connection – Linking a piece of information with something already established in our memory allows us to recall information and use it in other contexts.
3. Intensity – Information which has intensity or emotional content will be more readily recalled than other information. If you had to remember some obscure piece of information and you health and well being depended on you remembering it. You will remember it!
4. Involvement – Information which involves more than one of our senses will be remembered more easily than information experienced by just one of our senses. If you can see, hear, smell, touch and taste it, you will more likely remember it than if you just saw it.

Perhaps this explains why I can’t remember the name of the person just introduced to me – I heard the name only once. If I was thinking what I was going to say next, I may not have heard the name at all! To increase my chances of remembering the name, I could repeat it and associate it with an image. This may take a little time at first, but the time in itself is a form of involvement, which is a tool for remembering. As you develop a library of name images, it will take less time.

One of the best methods of learning new material is Mind Mapping ®. Note taking with Mind Mapping® requires an involvement with the material which naturally creates strong memory patterns.
It:

• Creates images
• Allows you to organise material as it is received
• Makes associations
• Connects with material from other sources

It also actively engages both sides of the brain. By allowing us to freely interact with information, and by adding colour, symbols and organisation to the information as we receive it, Mind Mapping® helps us develop the full potential of our minds. We develop better memories, more powerful organisational skills and more creativity.