Brain Builders

Easy Exercises to Sharpen Your Mind

Frank Minirth

• Publisher: Revell
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780800729073
• eBook ISBN: 9781493413850
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

Brain Builders helps readers tap into more of their brain's potential through the mental exercise of vocabulary building and memorization. With the exercises in this book, readers can improve test scores, increase IQ, memorize more information, communicate more effectively, and excel in work and interactions with other people. The book also reveals eight time-proven memory techniques, encourages Scripture memorization, and offers insights into language that will open new doors for any reader.

1
A Brilliant Mind

A well-developed vocabulary is the outward sign of a well-developed mind. Words are the working tools of your brain, just as surely as your hands or your eyes.

Marilyn vos Savant
1946–

This is sage advice from the person with the highest IQ ever measured on the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. Normal is 100; Marilyn vos Savant registered 230.

Another succinct admonition from vos Savant: “Every day, choose one word, one you’re not sure you know, and look it up in the dictionary.”1

Don’t let anything stop you from increasing your memory power. Start with what you can grasp, and move from there. I believe you’ll surprise yourself with your brain’s ability to stretch your memory beyond anything you thought possible.

Increasing brain power does not depend upon age, station in life, or intelligence; what matters is desire. No matter your age—seven, seventeen, fifty-seven, seventy-seven—you can exercise your mind. A desire to empower one’s mental capacity, coupled with effective techniques of vocabulary recall, will lead almost anyone to excel. Thomas Edison, thought by many to have the highest IQ in the last millennium, was dismissed from school because his teacher thought he did not have the intelligence to succeed academically. Albert Einstein could not read until he was seven and still was considered a slow learner in high school. Winston Churchill was last in his class in school but developed a remarkable vocabulary that led him to become one of the greatest orators of all time. If Edison, why not you? If Einstein, why not you? If Churchill, why not you? Your mental muscles can be developed as surely as your physical muscles.

Most of us naturally use less than 5 percent of our overall brain potential. The development of the other 95 percent lies in our own hands. The brain can be tuned, developed, and improved. It is the most highly developed computer ever made, and yet the circuits and the cells must be sharpened until it becomes analogous to a highly tuned engine. By tuning your brain, you create innumerable new opportunities for growth, communication, and experience, and you save countless hours formerly spent retrieving information—hours that can now be spent in fruitful enterprise and relationships.

When I am on the radio, I respond to numerous questions ranging from biochemistry, physiology, and neurology to theology. Callers invariably ask me if I am using a computer to look up the information. I answer, “Yes, I have the most matchless computer ever made—the human brain.”

You have that same potential; it merely awaits release. Good grades, job promotions, understanding in conversation, and the ability to persuade others—all are aided by the skills you can acquire from the tips and word lists in the following pages.

An Exceptional Tool

I have always loved words. Even in high school I enjoyed the study of words. The logic, I reasoned, was simple: we think in words; words are the tools of thoughts. With words we express our beliefs. With words we encourage others to act upon our beliefs. Others judge us by how we use words. Most standardized tests rely upon word identification in synonyms, antonyms, and analogies.

Different environments, people, and even opportunities to stand up for our beliefs and values all call for our ability to use words in a manner understandable to the subculture we are addressing. The right word allows us to connect with others. The French say that truth lies in nuances, and with the fine nuances of words we connect and communicate. Words are our showcase to the world. With words we create the perception we want to present. Indeed, words are of great price.

The average adult probably has a vocabulary of thirty to sixty thousand words. The highly literate may extend to one hundred thousand words. Yet the English language has well over one million words. Moving above the thirty-thousand-word range will greatly enhance our communication skills.

Why Memorize Words

Career success has been found to correlate with the number of words one knows. In the 1930s, Johnson O’Connor’s famous research at the Human Engineering Laboratory of Boston on one hundred young men studying to be executives revealed that of those who tested in the upper 10 percent, all had executive positions five years later, yet none of those testing in the lower 25 percent did.2 Many other tests since O’Connor’s have confirmed the correlation between career success and vocabulary knowledge. For example, chief executive officers are consistently found to have higher vocabulary knowledge than any other group, even doctors and lawyers.3

We form concepts with words. Many standardized tests (GRE, MAT, SAT) involve vocabulary and language. Since neuroplasticity (more about this term later) does exist, we can increase IQ through words. As we learn words, the number of connections in the brain and the number of cells themselves increase.

In refining the following technique, I took a clue from the Chinese. Their language is extremely effective because it is simplified in many respects: no persons, no inflections, no tenses, no infinitives, no irregular verbs, and no articles; in short, simple though complex. The lesson I learned was to make the word definitions simple and short. The definitions are brief by design. The words are grouped according to related clusters: words describing other words, such as large, small, good, food, speaking, agreeable, generosity, many, old, new, people; words from different parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives; and words representing concepts, such as experts, obedience, being careful, and wisdom. I also encourage memory tips such as visualization with exaggeration.

The technique works, and why not? It is simple, is easy to use, is interesting, brings a diversion from worry, and promotes success in career or school. This tool is built on the concept of neuroplasticity, taking advantage of the fact that the brain can change in response to our experience—in this case, the experience of memorization.

How to Use This Book

The word lists contained in this book will start you on the road to increasing your brain capacity and even possibly forming new brain cells. Who wouldn’t want that? Before we go further, however, a few comments are in order regarding how the word assignments were chosen. The brain can better comprehend a one-word definition than a long one. Thus, many of the definitions given are very short. Many words are also grouped for ease of learning—for example, nouns, verbs, adjectives, foreign words, similar words, prefixes, suffixes, word roots, and words from specific fields of cultural literacy (Christianity, English, literature, art, music, biology, neurology, and physics).

Finally, if the assignments seem numerous, remember that we are not seeking to cultivate an average mind but a brilliant mind. Don’t let the number of words intimidate you. Begin with one assignment at a time and you’ll be on the way to increasing your mental capacity.

Simply copy and carry one or two pages at a time in a handy pocket. And since we learn by spaced repetition, you must repeat the words on a word list several times daily until they are firmly fixed in your memory before moving to the next list. There are up to sixty words per word list to augment easy learning. The words in each section move from simple to difficult. They are intended to increase IQ scores, increase scores on standardized tests, and increase communication skills.

Incidentally, one of the tenets of memorization is review. Review of new words over a period of weeks helps to store the words in the permanent memory and adds to neuroplasticity. Because of the importance of review, some of the words are occasionally repeated in various lists.

2
Neuroplasticity

I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been a preparation for this hour and for this trial.

Sir Winston Churchill
1874–1965

Winston Churchill evinced an unparalleled eloquence of the English language. He often chose, from his vast array of vocabulary words, rhetoric to stir the souls of his countrymen. With lucidity and a majestic style, he rallied England in a desperate hour during World War II with these words: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

In 1953 Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his mastery of historical and biographical presentation and his brilliant oratory.

Churchill’s life also gives great credence to the concept of neuroplasticity. He was the lowest boy in the lowest class at Harrow School at age twelve. However, his love of the English language began to grow—it “got into my bones,” he recounted. In 1895 Churchill graduated from the Royal Military College, and in 1940 he became the prime minister of Great Britain with a matchless command of words.1

Neuroplasticity is very popular these days, and it should be, for it may hold the key to brilliance for those who choose to exercise their brains as described in this book. Neuroplasticity simply means that the brain is capable of being molded: it can change and develop more connections between its many nerve cells so that, to a degree, it can even develop more cells. Neurogenesis is a similar term; it means that the brain is capable of growth and development.

This book can help you learn to develop your mind through the mental exercise of memorization. Memorizing words is not just a way to increase vocabulary, though that in itself is reason enough. In fact, memory exercises have been proven to actually cause neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity offers you the opportunity to improve test scores, increase your IQ, memorize more information, communicate more effectively, be more productive at work—in other words, develop a brilliant mind. You can do more than just increase test scores; you can increase the capability of your brain. All of this is possible for you if you commit to exercise your mind with the lists of words contained in the following pages.

You can increase the number of synapses in your brain by memorizing words. The more words you memorize, the more you can memorize because of the increase in neural synapses. I know this to be true because I have learned it firsthand. I set out to test this by memorizing and reviewing a thousand words a day for a month. I was able to do so where I never could before, because I had been practicing the memory techniques and memorization lists such as the ones found in this book.

Before we begin the process of learning to increase our brain power, let’s look further at the reality of neuroplasticity. Once you have grasped the principle of neuroplasticity, you’ll be eager to move on to the mental exercises in this book so you can move from theoretical knowledge to experiential knowledge in developing a brilliant mind.

The concept of neuroplasticity was not an overnight scientific discovery. In fact, as early as the fifth century BC, Aristotle hinted at the concept of neuroplasticity when he said that we are what we repeatedly do.

Science began to pursue Aristotle’s logic in the late nineteenth century when Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) demonstrated that one could teach old dogs new tricks. In other words, through his famous canine experiment, he demonstrated that the brain could be changed or conditioned. Pavlov sounded a bell while presenting food to a dog, thereby stimulating the production of the dog’s saliva. After the procedure was repeated several times, the dog would salivate with only the sound of the bell. Not long after, Edward Thorndike’s (1874–1949) similar studies with cats and B. F. Skinner’s (1904–1990) experiments with rats continued the investigation of the effects of reinforcement on behavior. These studies seemed also to demonstrate the nervous system’s ability to change in response to experience.

In 1897 Charles Sherrington, a British neurophysiologist, coined the term synapse (the miniscule gap between two nerve cells) and stated that changes in neural connections were likely important for learning.

In the study mentioned in chapter 1, Johnson O’Connor of the Human Engineering Laboratory of Boston gave a vocabulary test to one hundred young men who were studying to become executives. The study implied that the top 10 percent of the test group—those who had executive positions five years later—had changed their nervous system by experience, and their greater facility to learn words increased their ability to think and to be successful.

In 1949 Donald O. Hebb, a psychologist, proposed that the functional relationship between a presynaptic and a postsynaptic neuron could change if excitation took place. (The presynaptic neuron sends the message over the synapse, and the message is received by the postsynaptic neuron.)

In the mid-twentieth century Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon, conducted research with thousands of people by stimulating specific brain regions while the subjects were conscious and aware of their surroundings. Stimulation could evoke clear and detailed recall of past events. Some memor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. A Brilliant Mind
• 2. Neuroplasticity
• 3. Memory Techniques
• 4. Introductory Tests
• 5. Parts-of-Speech Words
• 6. Relationship Words
• 7. An Assortment of Words
• 8. Various Nuances of Sundry Words
• 9. Difficult Words
• 10. Prefixes, Suffixes, and Roots
• 11. Abbreviations, Symbols, and Equations
• 12. Foreign Words
• 13. Specialized Fields: From Christianity to Physics
• 14. Scripture Memorization and Neuroplasticity
• 15. Key Questions about Neurogenesis
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Other books by Frank Minirth
• Back Ads
• Back Cover