Health: Older and wiser

Published on Friday 3 July 2009 13:29

STRUGGLING to remember your new pin number, your best friend's birthday or the name of your child's teacher? How about getting the exam results you know you deserve at university or that promotion you've been after at work?

You may think your brain is already working at full capacity; that from here on in it's a case of one piece of information in, one out. Or is the fact you keep forgetting to post the letter that's been in your bag for a fortnight just a symptom of advancing years? According to Tony Buzan, both theories are poison. In fact, we vastly underestimate our brain's true potential. "Science has shown that if you pumped in ten bits of data to your brain every second of every day of every year of your life you'd still be less than ten per cent full," says the brain trainer behind the mind map system. "You can never fill it up."

Though research into mind gyms and the like is still in the early stages, trials with schizophrenic patients have shown that subjects who used a brain-training computer programme saw much improved reasoning abilities and were able to remember considerably more than those who just played ordinary computer games. So, for those of you disheartened by a shamefully low ranking in sudoku, take heart and persevere – you can get better.

And, as with a good wine, it seems our brains only improve with age. Witness Andrew Carnegie. "Think of what he did as he got older," says Buzan. "Phenomenal! Then there's Giuseppe Verdi, whose Requiem was composed when he was in his 90s. Picasso is another: it was thought that in his 80s he declined, that his art became a bit more childish. Now that is regarded as his most intricate work, with multiple references to the history of art in the beautifully simple, pure images. Every single genius you look at became better as they got older. The ones who died younger were getting better until they died.

"The tragedy is that most people believe the brain gets worse as they get older so they stop using it," says Buzan.

And that, he says, is what is so poisonous. "One of the big, if not the biggest, theories at the moment regarding the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia is lack of use of the body and the brain. If you are physically active, your heart pumps more blood to the brain, which inspires it, feeds you oxygen and cleans it out. Thinking does the same thing. If you are involved in mind sports, crosswords, memory games, creative thinking, creative writing, learning or studying, your brain gets more blood.

"It's a bit like a lake. If you have a lake that has good streams flowing in to and out of it, it is healthy and full of life. If you have a lake with very little flowing in and out it becomes stagnant. And that is now what is theorised as the main cause of the onset of those declines in age."

Continuing the metaphor, just as you can feed your brain with oxygen, you can also pollute it with negative thinking. "So, for instance, imagining your brain is finite and stuff will fall out is actually poison because if you think that then you don't learn anything and your brain stagnates," says Buzan.

Buzan travels the world teaching people to use mind maps that he says will help them unlock their brain's potential. "It's about putting down on a page a diagram of how the brain naturally works," he says. And since the brain thinks in pictures and colours rather than words, that is how we should work. "We have taken notes for centuries only with words, which is not only a stumbling block for our thought processes, it's a tar pit. We think that we think literally when in fact we don't think literally at all; we think imagistically."

So he advises making doodles, and using as many colours of pen as we can find. "Using only one colour for note-taking is a real poison," he adds, "because if you think about it, one colour for the brain is a mono-tone; it is by definition monotonous – boring, dull. The brain switches off and tunes out."

Which is certainly not the case with Gunther Karsten, one-time winner of the World Memory Championships, who not only memorised a 202-digit spoken number to win the competition, but later the same evening recited it backwards as well.

"So we know that with the right training we can be hundreds of times more capable," says Buzan.

Which is all very impressive if you're a numbers kind of person. But what use is being able to remember a 200-digit figure when your day-to-day life is more about making deadlines, reaching targets and ensuring a healthy dinner is still on the table in the evening? "It has the same value as going to the gym for your physical body," says Buzan. "Your brain – your mental muscle – gets bigger and stronger, so you can apply that to anything. If someone at work says, 'We have a problem, we need some creative ideas,' if you have trained your memory well you have a much greater opportunity of solving those problems.

"You will similarly be socially more competent and confident because you won't go into a party and be introduced to five people one after the other and know you're going to forget them all.

"You would be able to learn much faster and with a lot more enjoyment," he says. "Your concentration would increase, your focus would increase, your enjoyment and fun within the learning process would increase and you would be totally organised."

Tony Buzan is appearing in Edinburgh on 14 July. For details and tickets, see www.buzanworld.com

How to boost your brain power

• Use coloured pens when note-taking.

• Use images or codes – stick figures for people, or a drawing of a car to remind you to renew your tax. "A picture really is worth 1,000 words for your memory," says Buzan. "You think in images, so make notes in images."

• Keep your body fit, because a healthy body really does mean a healthy mind.

• Look for connections between everyday things and play games in your head. For instance, how many uses can you think of for a paperclip, or what do the bottle of water and the notepad on your desk have in common?

• Daydream, then make your daydreams come true. For instance, if you dream of being able to draw, look up local art teachers in the phone book and start lessons.