From what it seems parts of the brain grow when they are used more. An example of this is a brain of a taxi drivers vs a bus driver http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/Maguire/Maguire2006.pdf

Also, Einsteins brain has other parts bigger, and some parts missing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einste...rt_15.25_larger

This makes me wonder if I could make up some runtiness and exercises to "grow" parts of the brain i like, and compete for the area of other parts of the brain i do not care for so much.

Does this sound possible and worth exploring or a total waist of time since a lot of it could be genetics, etc?

Also, if one would want to become more logical mathematical and science minded, one type of exercises could one do?
Not only to help grow the good parts, but perhaps prevent actions that could help grow other parts of the brain?

Do more math and logic problems + become less social = The next Einstein brain?

Hello Kclo4x,

Welcome to BM!

You ask some interesting questions!

My own view is that those areas of our brains we frequently exercise probably expand in capability and those we don't, atrophy or remain as they are at best. I surmise that brains respond in a similar way to muscles!
I have no proof of this at all, and have read of none, but my own experience confirms this belief.
After all, humans are adaptive (or will have a failing prospective), and generally speaking useage strengthens and non-useage weakens.

What is good and what is bad to think about?
My own view is that each individual should investigate their own strengths and weaknesses: build on strengths and re-inforce weaknesses.
What do you think?

Your suspicions are correct, Rhymer. As allegded in the following quote:

"Not long ago, most scientists believed the brain became “hard-wired� during childhood, and that there was little you could do to improve its function once you entered adulthood. Not anymore. The scientific community now accepts that the brain retains its plasticity—the ability to rewire itself for better function—throughout life. This website is dedicated to educating the public about the brain and cognition, how (and why) the brain can change during the course of life, and what you can do to sharpen your brain".
http://bfc.positscience.com/
I hope this post helps you in your search, Kc, and welcome!

"What is good and what is bad to think about?"

That is a very good question!
It obviously depends on what you want to be, which only makes things more complex. I bet it probably boils down to 'do what you want to be'
So I've just dug out a chemistry, biology, and a math book to start reading as well as a "Mensa mind challenge" book hoping that reading these will help my brain become the how "it" wants to be. I still need to find a good physics book as well, which i think i have a few of those floating around but i don't know if i like any of them

another thing to consider with this idea, is that watching videos, and listening to music is causing different parts of the brain to be activated and grow larger.
assuming it does, ipods could have an interesting effect on the masses and how they act

Anyways, i think i am going to try and do more reading, learning about sciences, logic problems, and stop listening to music (i stopped watching TV a year or so ago) to see if i can become the person i want to be
Maybe trying to be less social would also be good?
What els do you think i could do to get the ideal brain structure for being a scientists?


damn... stop listening to music is going to be extraordinarily hard!

perhaps i should also stop juggling, this may be counter productive as well, i juggle often and can do a few tricks i don't know what exactly this would do but perhaps it could be good?
I have read people with asperger syndrome often pass things in front of their face

blah, to many questions, to little information makes this discussion difficult

Sorry if i am a bit "jittery" in my post, I'm multi-tasking and forget i am even writing this!

Why would you stop listening to music? If you want to stimulate your mind, it seems like keeping music in the mix would be favorable. You simply need to find music which requires active listening such as classical or jazz, and eliminate the crap.

Speaking of great music, I just saw Chick Correa with Victor Wooten on the bass the other night--it was amazing.

I want to stimulate my mind, but only in certain parts. If music stimulates a unwanted part of my mind then it is being counter productive. It would be much better to read, have deeper thoughts, etc then one does while listening to music, or watching TV.

Classical music its perhaps better then say modest mouse when it comes to deeper thoughts, ability for logic, and what not, because it is, in my eyes less stimulating. It is less stimulating because it has no words, and the melodies are not so random. While Parting of the Sensory by modest mouse, has a whole story plot about how one die you will die, a inconsistent melody. The begging and end of almost completely opposite types of music, so i am going to say its more stimulating.

Anyways, i wish i could find some ways to help my brain morph into a better, and more efficient design.

What type of "edibles" could possibly help archive the ideal brain as well as avoiding undesirable stimuli, and getting a lot of desirable stimuli? I haven't read to much about nootropics, but is their one that increases plasticity's?

I bet stress increases nueroplasticity

If you want your brain to resemble Einstein, go read his book Out of my Later Years. There is a chapter on his educational theories. He suggest that it does not matter WHAT you learn, simply that you learn, and in doing so, the mind will develop a greater capacity for knowledge.

This said, Einstein was a very imaginative individual. Art stimulates creativity. If you want to think like Einstein, you cannot simply focus on learning math and science (unless you would like to be a robot). Knowledge is useless unless it can be practically applied to solve new problems, and the fact is that problem solving requires imaginative thinking.

I agree, the idea is to continually learn and apply the information. As you learn and apply it, it is bilt into your hierarchy of knowledge.

I agree that continually applying and learning information is good to do. But i think some things are counter productive to do if you want to have a certain type of brain, functioning a certain way. I don't think doing chemistry is going to help a person become a poet. poets likely* don't need to develop the same parts of the brain as a chemist would. Since i want to be a scientists, there must be things out there that are bad to do, and are counter productive for what i want to be. I think music would be one of these.


How does art "stimulate" creativity? don't problems do it more so? What type of art? Art seems destructive in many ways. i don't like it even if i find enjoyment out of it.


and i don't want my brain to resemble Einsteins brain, that was just an example saying how brains can likely change a lot. I want mine to be a good scientific brain.


Is it agreeable that not all stimulation has a positive out come?

Have you ever heard of Leonardo Da Vinci? lol.

Obviously he was a spectacular artist and but he is also considered to be the first modern scientist.

Art inspires creativity because you create. Creation requires imaginative thinking and is good for the mind.

I notice a lot of people trying to do this - making their logical and reasoning skills very strong but completely neglecting their right brain activity. The truth is that the brain is not a bunch of parts stuck together - it is a dynamic organism and each area of the brain is important to all other areas.

Its just silly to only try and do one thing. Genius' are not those who rigidly and mindlessly adhered to the dogma of the day, they were the ones who saw things differently and made incredible breakthroughs.

You would be amazed at how a creative person can take two completely unrelated things and put them together perfectly. An interesting example is Michael Faraday who instead of writing down advanced mathematical calculations (which he did not know how to do) he drew pictures.

So art and science can be very, very related. Einstein thought in pictures, Faraday drew his theories in pictures and of course Leonardo was pretty much a drawing machine.

The truth is if you want to be some great scientist, you are going to need creativity more than logic. Great science is about great advancement and you can't advance anywhere if you cannot think with imagination and creativity.

It's also seems to be much easier for the human mind to retain pictures than words. A good example of this is mnemonics and pegging in memory systems.

Stop trying to put your brain in a little box and force it into becoming scientifically minded. You should absorb all sorts of different things. One good example is an inventor who came up with the idea for a way of removing oil from a milkshake straw! You can't force creativity or genius and surrounding yourself in nothing but science is just going to make you a dull and uninteresting person. Science is great but there are many wonderful things in life to be experienced - sometimes its when you are not looking for the answer that it suddenly appears before you.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.�

-Einstein

That's a key and extremely perceptive question. It's not so much that there are "bad" things to think about, but that it is only bad not to think.

Well, if it is bad not to think, then whatever lowers us from thinking is bad, right?
So, TV and music are some of the things that are bad to do, since they basically put your brain to sleep. Well, i know thats totally true, for many many reasons, but for the most part..

I think it's very possible to take a practical approach in selecting things to reflect on! I'd suggest that there are bad things to think about and good things to think about... but then, it also comes down to how you think about these things, and for how long. In a way, you have to think about how you're thinking about things.

To use a very mundane example, it might be bad to think about something like, say, a girlfriend cheating on you. If this object of reflection has no basis in reality, it's probably a "bad thing to think about", because thinking about it will probably make you unhappy or even paranoid. It's morbid fantasy. Makes you unhappy. That'll tend to make others unhappy. So it's bad. But on the other hand, if your girlfriend really did cheat on you then it might be good to reflect on it so that you can make skillful decisions about your relationship in future. You might decide to be less jealous or possessive, or make other helpful decisions. That would make you happy. Good. But dwelling on it too long would make you unhappy. Bad. There are lots of examples like that.

It is probably also bad to spend too much time dwelling on questions that are unanswerable and which make you unhappy to think about. Like, "Why was I born when I'm just going to suffer and die?" The "why was I born" is largely unanswerable... and pondering this sort of thing isn't going to make anyone much happier. It's largely a waste of time. Bad.

Reflecting on reality is good, I'd say, if it helps you to accept things more as they are, and be happier. Thinking about impermanence, which is a universal law and applies to everything, definitely helps you to take things much less heavily. Thinking about death is also potentially very useful! It can help you to have a much more immediate approach to life. A lot depends on how you frame the questions, obviously...

Is'nt there a game boy game that is supposed to make you "smarter"? I've also read that games like Counter Strike and such makes you more tactical and so on, what about meditation?
I'm not a scientist, but it sounds reasonable that you become smarter if you do lots of different stuff, dont forget to excercise too.

If you have any questions about nootropics just pop in to the cognitive enhancement section, they know it all!

Is'nt there a game boy game that is supposed to make you "smarter"? I've also read that games like Counter Strike and such makes you more tactical and so on, what about meditation?
I'm not a scientist, but it sounds reasonable that you become smarter if you do lots of different stuff, dont forget to excercise too.

If you have any questions about nootropics just pop in to the cognitive enhancement section, they know it all!

Play chess to build mental strength, stamina, and attention span.

I remember reading that Einstein said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Our word 'brain' comes from the Old English 'braegen'I. Interestingly, the Greek, and Latin, for brain is 'encephalon' . It simply means, "within the head". Apparently the ancients had no idea of the nature and many functions of the brains. Because of its many functions, I will use the plural. Aristotle theorized that the main function of brain --shall we call it "that blob of snotty matter"-- which the Greeks and Romans thought of as that matter within the head, was to act as a lubricant (snot?).

Without any pretence that I am an expert, here is how I imagine the brains to operate: I imagine them to be like a complex quantum-like computer filled with all kinds of complex software, even capable of processing feelings. As Seth Lloyd says, we operate within the universe, which is a massive quantum computer.

On the somatic level there is the hardware; on the psychic level there is the software, and on the pneumatic, or spiritual level, is the imagination, which is capable of creating and operating the programs.

He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much.

The same applies for the brain, no secret give it good nutrition, soup it up with the odd nootropic, and then simply do the work in the field that you want to get good at...