Mentalrobics®
Stay mentally fit with these daily brain exercises. You will learn how to flex your mind, improve your creativity and boost your memory. Pick your favorite exercises from our daily suggestions and repeat them as desired to enhance your mental capacity. Try to do some Mentalrobics every single day!
Mentalrobics Articles
Daily exercises and tips for improving memory, creativity, vocabulary and stress management.
Flash Cards
When you are trying to memorize something, flash cards can be a very effective way to improve your memory.
Vocab Builder
This vocabulary test is loaded with over 3000 of the most common words found on the SAT and GRE standardized tests.
Mentalrobics Articles
Ego and Superego
According to Freud, the mind is made up of the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is concerned with satisfying our needs, the ego is aware of the self and the world, and the superego is concerned with morality.
Creative ideas originate in the unconscious id and must be filtered through the ego and superego before they can be expressed to the world. The ego may reject an idea because it is unrealistic or impractical and the superego may reject an idea because it is against our ethics.
For example, an idea to genetically engineer a purple cat might be rejected by the ego for being impossible. The idea to throw a cat into a vat of purple paint would be rejected by the superego for being cruel.
Very few creative ideas will get past an overly restrictive ego and superego. At the same time, an excessively passive ego or superego will result in the expression of many impractical or immoral ideas. Through exercises such as brainstorming, we can train our ego and superego to be more or less selective depending upon our needs.
Adverbs
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies a verb, adjective, phrase, clause, or other adverb. Adverbs often end in -ly, but not always. Here are some examples of adverbs.
"I am running quickly."
" Unfortunately, the car was too old to be fixed."
"The woman is very pretty."
"The monster jumped out quite suddenly."
Advantages of the Phonetic System
The Phonetic Mnemonic System has several advantages over some of the other mnemonic systems.
The Peg system is limited by the length of lists that you can use it to remember. The Phonetic system does not have this limit and can be used to remember very long lists.
The Loci system requires that recall be in sequential order. This is not always convenient. The Phonetic system allows you to recall items out of order and by number. In other words, you can recall the 78th item directly without counting through 1-77.
Another advantage is that the Phonetic system can be used to easily remember numbers. No other system can do this.
The big disadvantage of the Phonetic system is that it takes the longest to learn and is slow to use until you have mastered the technique.
Type B Personality
The opposite of a type A personality is type B. These people tend to be more relaxed and calmer than their type A counterparts. Type B people are easy-going, uncompetitive and more realistic about deadlines and goals. They know their limits and rarely push them. Type B people are often called socializers because they enjoy parties and being in groups. Type B people are very easy to get along with because they rarely get irritated or bothered.
As you might expect, type B people have a lower incidence of heart disease and other stress related illnesses.
Follow Braingle!