Reading Practice

Mental Gymnastics
A. THE working day has just started at the head office of Barclays Bank in London.
Seventeen staff are helping themselves to a buffet breakfast as young psychologist
Sebastian Bailey enters the room to begin the morning’s framing session. But this is no
ordinary training session. He’s not here to sharpen their finance or management skills. He’s
here to exercise their brains.

B. Today’s workout, organised by a company called the Mind Gym in London, is entitled
“having presence”. What follows is an intense 90-minute session in which this rather
abstract concept is gradually broken down into a concrete set of feelings, mental tricks and
behaviours. At one point the bankers are instructed to shut then eyes and visualise
themselves filling the room and then the building. They finish up by walking around the
room acting out various levels of presence, from low-key to over the top.

C. It’s easy to poke fun. Yet similar mental workouts are happening in corporate seminar
rooms around the globe. The Mind Gym alone offers some 70 different sessions, including
ones on mental stamina, creativity for logical thinkers and “zoom learning”. Other outfits
draw more directly on the exercise analogy, offering “neurobics” courses with names like
“brain sets” and “cerebral fitness”. Then there are books with titles like Pumping Ions, full of
brainteasers that claim to “flex your mind”, and software packages offering memory and
spatial- awareness games.

D. But whatever the style, the companies’ sales pitch is invariably the same— follow our
routines to shape and sculpt your brain or mind, just as you might tone and train your body.
And, of course, they nearly all claim that their mental workouts draw on serious scientific
research and thinking into how the brain works.

E. One outfit, Brainergy of Cambridge, Massachusetts (motto: “Because your grey matter
matters”) puts it like this: “Studies have shown that mental exercise can cause changes in
brain anatomy and brain chemistry which promote increased mental efficiency and clarity.
The neuroscience is cutting-edge.” And on its website, Mind Gym trades on a quote from
Susan Greenfield, one of Britain’s best known neuroscientists: “It’s a bit like going to the
gym, if you exercise your brain it will grow.”

F. Indeed, die Mind Gym originally planned to hold its sessions in a local health club, until
its founders realised where the real money was to be made. Modem companies need
flexible, bright thinkers and will seize on anything that claims to create them, especially if it
looks like a quick fix backed by science. But are neurobic workouts really backed by
science? And do we need them?

G. Nor is there anything remotely high-tech about what Lawrence Katz, co- author of Keep
Your Brain Alive, recommends. Katz, a neurobiologist at Duke University Medical School in
North Carolina, argues that just as many of US fail to get enough physical exercise, so we
also lack sufficient mental stimulation to keep our brain in trim. Sine we are busy with jobs,
family and housework. But most of this activity is repetitive routine. And any leisure time is

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spent slumped in front of the TV.

H. So, read a book upside down. Write or brush your teeth with your wrong hand. Feel your
way around the room with your eyes shut. Sniff vanilla essence while listening intently to
orchestral music. Anything, says Katz, to break your normal mental routine. It will help
invigorate your brain, encouraging its cells to make new connections and pump out
neuroteophins, substances that feed and sustain brain circuits.

I. Well, up to a point it will. “What I’m really talking about is brain maintenance rather than
bulking up your IQ,” Katz adds. Neurobics, in other words, is about letting your brain fulfill
its potential. It cannot create super-brains. Can it achieve even that much, though?
Certainly the brain is an organ that can adapt to the demands placed on it. Tests on animal
brain tissue, for example, have repeatedly shown that electrically stimulating the synapses
that connect nerve cells thought to be crucial to learning and reasoning, makes them
stronger and more responsive. Brain scans suggest we use a lot more of our grey matter
when carrying out new or strange tasks than when we’re doing well-rehearsed ones. Rats
raised in bright cages with toys sprout more neural connections than rats raised in bare
cages— suggesting perhaps that novelty and variety could be crucial to a developing brain.
Katz, And neurologists have proved time and again that people who lose brain cells
suddenly during a stroke often sprout new connections to compensate for the
loss—especially if they undergo extensive therapy to overcome any paralysis.

J. Guy Claxton, an educational psychologist at the University of Bristol, dismisses most of

the neurological approaches as “neuro-babble”. Nevertheless, there are specific mental
skills we can learn, he contends. Desirable attributes such as creativity, mental flexibility,
and even motivation, are not the fixed faculties that most of US think. They are thought
habits that can be learned. The problem, says Claxton, is that most of US never get proper
training in these skills. We develop our own private set of mental strategies for tackling
tasks and never learn anything explicitly. Worse still, because any learned skill— even
driving a car or brushing our teeth-quickly sinks out of consciousness, we can no longer
see the very thought habits we’re relying upon. Our mental tools become invisible to US.

K. Claxton is the academic adviser to the Mind Gym. So not surprisingly, the company
espouses his solution-that we must return our thought patterns to a conscious level,
becoming aware of the details of how we usually think. Only then can we start to practise
better thought patterns, until eventually these become our new habits. Switching
metaphors, picture not gym classes, but tennis or football coaching.

L. In practice, the training can seem quite mundane. For example, in one of the eight
different creativity workouts offered by the Mind Gym—entitled “creativity for logical
thinkers” one of the mental strategies taught is to make a sensible suggestion, then
immediately pose its opposite. So, asked to spend five minutes inventing a new pizza, a
group soon comes up with no topping, sweet topping, cold topping, price based on time of
day, flat-rate prices and so on.

M. Bailey agrees that the trick is simple. But it is surprising how few such tricks people
have to call upon when they are suddenly asked to be creative: “They tend to just label
themselves as uncreative, not realising that there are techniques that every creative person
employs.” Bailey says the aim is to introduce people to half a dozen or so such strategies in

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a session so that what at first seems like a dauntingly abstract mental task becomes a set
of concrete, learnable behaviours. He admits this is not a short cut to genius.
Neurologically, some people do start with quicker circuits or greater handling capacity.
However, with the right kind of training he thinks we can dramatically increase how
efficiently we use it.

N. It is hard to prove that the training itself is effective. How do you measure a change in an
employee’s creativity levels, or memory skills? But staff certainly report feeling that such
classes have opened their eyes. So, neurological boosting or psychological training? At the
moment you can pay your money and take your choice. Claxton for one believes there is
no reason why schools and universities shouldn’t spend more time teaching basic thinking
skills, rather than trying to stuff heads with facts and hoping that effective thought habits
are somehow absorbed by osmosis.

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Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1 In
boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement is true
NO if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
1..................... Mind Gym coach instructed employees to imagine that they are the
building

2..................... Mind Gym uses the similar marketing theory that is used all round

3..................... Susan Greenfield is the founder of Mind Gym

4..................... All business and industries are using Mind Gym’s session globally

5..................... According to Mind Gym, extensive scientific background supports

their mental training sessions

Questions 6-13
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds
below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet.

A. Guy Claxton

B. Sebastian Bailey

C. Susan Greenfield

D. Lawrence Katz

NB: You may use any letter more than once

6..................... inspiration to keep our brain fit##q We do not have enough

7..................... The more you exercise your brain like exercise in the gym, the more
brain will grow

8..................... Exercise can keep your brain health instead of improving someone’s
IQ

9..................... It is valuable for schools to teach students about creative skills

besides basic known knowledge

10..................... We can develop new neuron connections when we lose old

connections via certain treatment

11..................... People usually mark themselves as not creative before figuring out
there are approaches for each person

12..................... An instructor in Mind Gym who guided the employees to exercise

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13..................... Majority of people don’t have appropriate skills-training for brain

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Solution:
1. NO 8. D
2. YES 9. A
3. NO 10. D
4. NO 11. B
5. NOT GIVEN 12. B
6. D 13. A
7. C

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