Monday, April 6, 2009

Increase Your IQ for FREE...at your desk


To give you a little something worth tuning into, I thought I would give a tool that has proven to increase IQ! There is a company out there called Soak Your Head. They've created brain training software with a free demo site for you to try (http://www.soakyourhead.com/dual-n-back.aspx).
It reminded me of the old Simon game from the 1980's where you had to remember the combination of colors lighting up in order.
I played with this for about 15 minutes and my scores were like a roller coaster. You will be asked to download a particular desktop program for your PC or Mac, but it only takes a moment and its easy to un-install.
From there, a 9 box grid lights up with an orange box at the same time a voice says a letter. Your job is to try and remember which letters are said and which boxes light up. You type in "A" for the boxes and "L" for the letters. Your brain is having to use the RIGHT and LEFT hemispheres the entire time.
The right side is busy creating a big picture, while the left is trying to analyze what is right/wrong while executing a decision immediately. For me, the right was getting overwhelmed with too much information and my emotions kicked-in with an "overwhelm". I could tell that I needed to REALLY focus to remember enough information for the points to increase.
What was waaaaaay cooooool, was my brain ability to create a mental picture memory of the events. This then helped me recall the Visual Memory of what happened, and helped me increase my score. I also found that if I repeated the letters out loud, I created an even better memory of what the last 3 moves were on the grid.
I'll continue using the demo for the next several days...and we'll see how the scores improve.
If you try it out...let us know how it works for you!
~Kathy Potts
Kathy@changereactionconsulting.com