bodner088

In exercising the body, we stimulate the brain's abilities and capacities. People who are sedentary by their habits or nature are less likely to be as receptive to mental challenges than their vigorously exercising counterparts. Put simply, if you exercise your body, expansion and improvement of your cognition, creativity, neural plasticity, memory and other brain/mind functions becomes easier, and can be achieved significantly more efficiently. While physical exercise is no substitute for brain training, the latter becomes much easier if the former is made part of the whole mind-body fitness regimen. This has to do with a combination of several factors: 1) Increased brain oxygenation; 2) Improved neurotransmitter activity and chemical balance in the brain; 3) Easier ability to focus on intellectual tasks when body is in a relaxing or relaxed state after physical labor; 4) Heightened consciousness following exercise; 5) Brainwave (entrainment status) activity post-exercise is signi...

Scan of the poem "Anagram" from the 1633 edition of George Herbert's The Temple. Source: http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Anagram.html (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) As my English Literature Professor at State University once told us in a lecture, " They ain't no disputin' da facts! " Working with anagrams , finding analogies, as well as performing some deciphering tasks [often cleverly disguised as games !] will build your associative intelligence. Your associative intelligence has to do with 1 ) your ability to generalize from an example; 2 ) your ability to recognize similarities among objects in groups; and 3 ) the sped with which your miraculously Braintenance-enhanced mind is ability to make these identifications, generalizations and associations. Anagrams (paired with secret de-coding keys) have been the basis for numerous encrypted messages through the ages. For you Harry Potter fans , how about Lord Voldemort ? So doggone obvious. There is eve...

When I was merely a young lad (with very little promise), my elementary teachers would frequently inquire of me, "Douglas -- are you sitting on your brains ?" {for some reason, the the 1960s, each of us had "brains" - plural - but none of us actually had a brain - singular - or half a brain. While we are speaking etymologically, one of my favorites when when a teacher would observe, hands on hips, with bitter sarcasm, " If you had half a brain, you'd be dangerous! " They saw this as a clever way of saying that we (the underachievers, daydreamers and juvenile delinquents ) each had less than half of a brain. I saw it as something different -- to me, I knew that I had a whole brain (albeit impaired in functionality) -- I just thought it axiomatic that if  reduced to half-brain status , anyone might be dangerous. With this logic, I managed to avoid being personally insulted. My teachers likely thought that I was just too stupid to be rightly insulted. B...