Got Brain Acceleration?

By: H. Bernard Wechsler
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:27:00
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The Secret of Brain Acceleration

Are you in the world of persuasion and influence, and convincing folks to choose and value your ideas?

The Gallup Poll over the past five decades indicates the public is insulted by being called a salesperson – one who must convince others what to believe, and to act on their belief.

Even the President must convince the electorate, the Congress and the Supreme Court. Lawyers have to persuade clients to retain their services, opposing counsel to negotiate a settlement, or a judge and jury to accept the merits of their arguments.

How often do you ask yourself the sanity-preserving questions – So What? - Who Cares? – and, Whats In It For Me? Do you realize the rest of the world is always asking these three questions about everything they hear, read, see, and feel?

The goal of most sane folks is to be as relevant and practical as we can, so others consider us a useful and valuable resource. I find that my layman’s interest in neuroscience and how the brain functions, makes me suspect as a businessperson and often a pariah as a social being. My solution is to keep the latest scientific breakthroughs to myself and stick to speed-reading techniques.

Not. Some of the new stuff is too sweet not to divulge when it relates to tripling your reading speed and doubling your memory.

Neuroscience and Rapid Learning

MIT researchers headed by Thomas J. McHugh stood up at a session of the Society for Neuroscience October 18, 2006, and said, Alzheimers or injury to the brain causes a loss of our ability to create and save new memories. Not new. What is new is that now we know exactly where it is located.

So What?

This Sweet-Spot is also critical for Speed (Rapid) Learning. Because Use-it-or-Lose-it – referring to your brain, is a scientific truth - you should exercise your prefrontal cortex by remembering the location of where all our mysterious learning occurs.

It is called Dentate (tooth-like) Gyrus (ring), a serrated piece of brain structure, wrapped around your Hippocampus (Sea Horse shape) area, located in the Limbic System. When the MITs engineered a mouse without this receptor for a key neurotransmitter (hormone-like) in the Dentate Gyrus, the poor mouser had no new memories to save. He/she could not recognize or recall new locations. To humans as well as mice – environmental recall is life itself because it is how we remember the episodes of our daily existence. Before information is usable to cope with our existence – it enters into short term memory and then saved at synapses between neurons (brain cells) for long-term recall.

Who Cares?

Knowing the neurotransmitter in the Dentate Gyrus for the first time, (located in the hippocampal circuit) researchers can begin serious work on Alzheimers and other memory deficits. For Speed Reading – it means accelerated learning is directly linked to these synapses (junctures – from Greek, clasped together), right at this Dentate Gyrus - thingo.

Can we train the DG for rapid reading? Give them a break, they just discovered it.

Meditation Changes the Structure and Function the Brain

I started full time meditating for twenty-minutes, twice daily, six-months ago. Started off hating it, being bored and wanting to quit about three-times weekly. Reviewing the past ten-years of knowledge seeking, meditating has produced the most meaningful improvements in my behaviors and feelings.

Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, submitted research on his experiments with a group of Tibetan Monks. These folks are both experienced and lifelong masters in deep meditation. They submitted to fMRIs which indicated their brain was producing high frequency Gamma cycles per second, together with brain synchrony and coordination. It was unlike ordinary humans produce.

I know you are dying to know what part of the brain these Monks involve in meditation – it is the left Pre-Frontal cortex. Practice modifies the brain, the same as practice in sports improves playing skills. One enhances the function of the brain, while sports practice improves personal performance.

So What Again?

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the science of Neuroplasticity (modification of brain structures) is improved by Meditation. Wait – we can jumpstart our mental processes by exercising our brain circuits. That means there is proof meditation can modify the structure and function of our neural networks. Davidson offers his opinion that these positive changes are permanent.

Google: Meditation to see how this empowers meditators. Check out learning this skill for life enhancement.

Endwords

What areas of life are impacted by meditating?

Permanent release of stress, anxiety and angst. No doubt. How about personal healing? Research at Harvard University Hospital by Dr. Herbert Benson indicates the function of our immune systems are accelerated and improved.

Included are our Natural Killer Immune Cells, Bone Marrow Immune Cells, and Thymus Immune Cells. Add to that our Leucocytes, Phagocytes, Lymphocytes, and MacroPhages – all involved in destroying viruses and toxins.

Based on a CBA – Cost-Benefit-Analysis, forty-minutes of daily meditation is a killer strategy.

What about learning speed reading skills – how will it affect your career? When you 3x your reading speed, and 2x your memory skills, you accelerate to the fast-track with competitive-advantages. Tell me – if you can read-and-remember three books, articles and reports in the time others can hardly finish even one – is that a serious competitive-advantage?

See ya,

copyright © 2006
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
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