ThinkBuzan April 2010 Newsletter

Time really is running out for our iMindMap Courses in April!

We are holding our iMindMap Courses in Cardiff, UK this April, and we only have a few spaces left. Also, we are offering 10% off when you book onto both of our Accredited Courses, the iMindMap Licensed Instructor and iMindMap Master Trainer.

Join our in-house experts

This is an exclusive opportunity to join us at our headquarters and become an iMindMap Licensed Instructor or Master Trainer. Our in-house training is conducted by our leading training experts, who have been described as ‘enthralling’ and ‘mesmerising’ by course attendees.

Become a member of the family at our headquarters

When people attend our courses at our company headquarters, they are amazed at the warmth, hospitality and unique insight into the ThinkBuzan organisation they receive. Not only do you receive a distinctive qualification, which advances your iMindMap skills and boosts your employability, but you are also able to hear about the latest company developments and exchange ideas with ThinkBuzan CEO, Chris Griffiths.

Get 10% off when you book and pay for both our iMindMap Accredited courses

This is an exclusive opportunity to become a member of the ThinkBuzan family, and directly influence the field of Mind Mapping. With only a few places left, make sure that you have secured yours for our April iMindMap training, held at our company headquarters in Cardiff, UK – remember, book and pay for the iMindMap Licensed Instructor and Master Trainer courses, and you receive 10% off!

Don’t forget...You can attend iMindMap Accredited Courses in the US

If you are unable to attend our iMindMap Accredited Courses this April, in the UK, we are holding both courses in San Francisco, USA on the 10th and 11th May 2010. Plus, you can receive 10% off when you book and pay for both the iMindMap Licensed Instructor and Master Trainer Courses!

Tony’s US Tour: last places before tickets open to the public

Tony Buzan’s US Tour has been experiencing unprecedented interest, but it is crucial that you book tickets for this once-in-a-lifetime event before ticket sales are opened to the public. Tony’s fans, leading businesses, training coaches, educators and more have been clamouring for the chance to see Tony in action in the US, with tickets going fast.

Now, ThinkBuzan will open this offer up to the public, and we expect sell-out status very quickly after we do. Don’t regret a missed opportunity –book now and secure your place to see the inventor of Mind Maps in action.

Introducing... our iPad application and iMindMap Mobile Pro!

We are excited to announce that we are developing our own iMindMap for iPad application! Many of our users have enquired about this, commenting that iMindMap will be the “killer app” for the iPad, and we are delighted to confirm that we are in the process of development.

If you enjoy the large screen experience of iMindMap desktop and you like the touchable, organic feel of iMindMap Mobile, you’ll love the iMindMap for iPad app. With an array of popular features in development, we are confident you will enjoy this revolutionary next step in Mind Mapping! And remember, the iMindMap for iPad application is the only application from Tony Buzan, the inventor of Mind Maps. So, watch this space, as over the next few months we will be announcing feature details and exclusive information about the latest revelation in Mind Mapping.

Also, we were overwhelmed with the response we received to our iMindMap Mobile application launch, and now we have even more great news! Coming soon, we will also be offering a paid version of this app, iMindMap Mobile Pro, with some exciting advanced tools. Also, the iMindMap Mobile FREE edition will be updated with some user-friendly features and a brand new video.

For iMindMap Mobile Pro, we listened to all of your helpful feedback and quickly responded with your most in-demand request! Enjoy all of the features of iMindMap Mobile, with the added power of an amazing export function. Export to image, PDF and iMindMap files so that you can share your on-the-go Mind Maps with your colleagues, friends and family.

For more information about these editions and more, please visit our iMindMap Mobile page.

The outer limits of the human brain

Marvel at these amazing brain feats and find out how you can tap the amazing potential of your brain

New Scientist, Magazine Issue 2676

EVEN the average human brain is remarkable. In adults it has perhaps 100 billion neurons, each connected to its neighbours by 5000 synapses or so. A brain can make and break a million new connections each second. It can store information for more than a century. It can reconstruct our surroundings using a range of sensors that sample vibration, radiation, chemicals and pressure, and prioritise in milliseconds what might be of interest or concern. It coordinates at least 640 muscles and looks after the essentials of survival with little thought, freeing our minds to socialise, ponder the meaning of our existence and learn from our experiences and those of people who we may never even have met.

Yet some brains are that little bit more remarkable than others. Why do the most gifted and talented brains stand out from the crowd? Is there anything physical or physiological that sets them apart? Here we take a look at some outstanding grey matter, and ask what brains are like at the outer limits of human achievement.

High IQ

INTELLIGENCE is a slippery concept to define, so not surprisingly it has been tricky to pin it down in the brain. Several studies claim to link brain size, weight, volume or head circumference to intelligence, but no clear or consistent pattern has emerged.

Certainly size is not the whole story. Women's brains are smaller than men's, even when corrected for body size, yet there is no consistent difference in men and women's IQs. Indeed, the Guinness World Records listed a woman, Marilyn vos Savant, as having the highest IQ between 1986 and 1989.

If size does not explain all, does brain activity give any clues? In 2000, the Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, identified what might be called the brain's "G spot", the area associated with general intelligence, which is what IQ tests are thought to measure. PET scans showed that puzzles and tasks that provide a good measure of general intelligence produce activity in a very specific region of the lateral frontal cortex. This hints that efficiency, connectivity and focused activity may be more important than size.

Intelligence may also be connected to working memory, located in the region near the brain's G spot. It is sometimes possible to train working memory with practice, and doing so may benefit IQ and the ability to solve new problems.

A flair for language

ZIAD FAZAH claims to speak, read and write 59 languages - 10 at the tip of his tongue, and the others he reckons could be brushed up in a week. He moved to Lebanon as a baby, and growing up near a port, met and tried to converse with sailors of many nationalities. Fazah began learning French and English at school and decided at the age of 11 that he wanted to speak all the world's languages. So, over a three-year period during which he never left Lebanon, he studied more than 50 languages, several at a time, taking about three months to master each.

What is the secret of such amazing linguistic talents? Fazah doesn't claim to be special, though he says his memory is "like a photographic camera", and he admits to a good deal of study. Anyone can speak a foreign language, he thinks. You need to spend 30 minutes each day listening carefully to the sounds of a native speaker, another 30 minutes studying the grammar and then 15 minutes reciting the sounds - a very important step.

There is no simple answer to what makes a brain linguistically gifted. The only consensus is that early exposure is a big advantage. If you don't form memories of language-specific sounds during the first year of life, the ability to recognise them may all but vanish, and learning becomes much more difficult. Exposure to different grammars by the age of 7 also seems to leave open a window that makes it easier to learn later. On the other hand, acquiring vocabulary, say the experts, is simply down to memory and hard graft.

Scientific genius

ONE of the greatest scientific minds of all time ended up in 240 pieces, packed into a couple of jars, and was carted around for years in the trunk of Princeton pathologist Harvey Thomas's car. Einstein's brain, at the time of his autopsy in 1955 (just 7 hours after his death), was reported by Thomas to appear unremarkable - it was a little shrunken with age, and slightly smaller than average. Nevertheless, Thomas carefully kept it preserved until science had new ways to scrutinise this amazing grey matter.

In the early 1980s, neurologist Marian Diamond from the University of California, Berkeley, found that Einstein's brain contained a greater than normal ratio of glial cells to neurons. Glial cells are involved in neural processing and signal transmission. Einstein's brain appeared to have double the normal number of glial cells in the left parietal region.

Perhaps this region is key. Some eminent mathematicians say abstract concepts feel almost real, to the point that it is as if they exist in the brain and can be manipulated like real objects. There are other possibilities, however. Einstein claimed to be dyslexic and to have a poor memory for words. Damage to this region can cause dyslexia, so maybe his low neuron-to-glia ratio was a cause or result of his verbal difficulties rather than his reasoning skills.

Then in 1998, Witelson studied Einstein's brain again and it appeared unremarkable except for the parietal lobes. Here the brain was 15 per cent wider than average, giving it a more spherical shape. What's more, while normal brains are asymmetrical, Einstein's parietal lobes were symmetrical. This all lends weight to the idea that his brain structure may have been unusual in some key areas that are important for spatial and reasoning skills.

Athletic minds

THE bodies of athletes are clearly special - the result of good genes and lots of hard graft - but what about their brains? Is there any grey-matter advantage that helps the likes of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps to outperform their rivals?

Many sports require specific patterns of stereotypical body movements, and these certainly leave their mark on the brain, as areas corresponding to the most regularly used body parts expand with use.

Some people may also have brains that allow them to keep on going when lesser competitors give up. The sensation of tiredness we get from sporting activity seems to be generated not in the muscles but in the brain, through a signalling molecule called interleukin-6. Perhaps this signal is naturally weaker or easier to ignore in some brains. If so, this might be why some athletes can push their bodies beyond the limits that most people are able to endure.

Memory Marvels

FOR anyone who goes through life forgetting where they left their keys, the outer limits of human memory are truly mind-blowing. Take AJ who is in her 40s and can remember every day of her life since her teens. Or Kim Peek, the real-life inspiration for the film Rain Man, who has memorised at least 7600 books and countless zip codes and telephone area codes. Then there's Ben Pridmore, an accountant from Derby, UK, who has just smashed three world records for remembering 930 binary digits in 5 minutes, 819 digits in 15 minutes and 364 playing cards in 10 minutes.

Recall like AJ's may indicate that the normal process of memory pruning has gone awry. However, many experts believe that differences in memory owe nothing to innate structures and everything to skills that are developed. Memory marvels often use tried and tested techniques, such as mnemonics, rhymes or visualisation to help stamp memories into their grey matter. A good memory requires effort and attention.

Supersenses

WHILE most of us have three types of colour receptors in our eyes, some people have four. This gives them an extra dimension to their colour perception. All these so-called tetrachromats are women, because the genes involved are on the X chromosomes. One person studied was an interior decorator, and was sensitive to colours within the range most people would see as just beige - so perhaps this supersense isn't always an advantage!

Then there are super-tasters, whose enhanced taste comes from having more than the average number of tastebuds. And acute hearing is common to most young adults, who can hear frequencies up to 20,000 hertz as compared with 8000 in the elderly. However, there is nothing special about the brains of supersensors. The human sensory cortex seems to be able to handle whatever information the sense organs can throw at it - the limits are down to the information coming in, not the grey matter that handles it.

But there is one way that the brain itself seems to stretch the boundaries of the sensors in a condition known as synaesthesia. Here the sensory experiences merge, as one sensation recruits others. Some people experience colours when they hear certain sounds or see words and numbers. Others hear sounds with touch sensations, or experience shapes with tastes.

Up to 1 in 23 people are synaesthesic and it runs in families, indicating a genetic component. However, our everyday use of mixed sensory metaphors such as "sharp tastes" or "soft sounds" indicates that this is one extraordinary mental ability that we may all experience!