Your brain’s  cortex, your grey matter, is the source of your analytical thinking ability. Your cortex is naturally divided into two sides that are connected by a very complex mass of nerve fibers called the corpus collosum.

 For most people the left side of the cortex (your left brain) deals with logical thinking — anything connected to words, numbers, reasoning, and analysis. It also tends to generate Gamma and Beta brainwave frequencies.

The right side of the cortex, (your right brain) on the other hand, focuses on imagination, images, color, day-dreaming, visualization, and pattern recognition. It tends to generate the Alpha brainwaves that are so highly developed in meditators and artistic types

Which Side Are You Using?
There’s a common assumption that we each habitually use either our right-brain or our left-brain.  So, if that’s true, then someone like Einstein would have used his left-brain, while someone like the great creative master photographer Ansel Adams would have focused on his right-brain.

Right? But does this assumption really hold up?

Actually Albert Einstein and Ansel Adams’ personal notebooks reveal otherwise. Einstein did not credit his great scientific insights to left-brain logic, but rather to right-brain highly creative daydreaming. And Ansel Adams credited his greatest art photographs not to his right-brain artistic eye, but to his left-brain detailed analytical note taking.

Whole Brain Thinking
If you say you are primarily creative or intuitive (right-brain dominated), or analytical and logical (left-brain dominant), you’re just describing your most highly developed mental skill — and the side of the cortex that is you’ve most highly developed.

Our most powerful mental activities actually use both sides of our cortex simultaneously — generating whole brain thinking.

With the proper training, both sides of your cortex can flourish and develop. Whole brain thinking has the potential to literally DOUBLE your mind power, and increase your ability to do creative thinking like Albert Einstein and Ansel Adams.

Get Immediate Results
There’s an outrageously powerful way for you to immediately refine the non-dominant side of your cortex and experience more whole brain thinking.

Top executives and athletes, entrepreneurs, artists and inventors, and people from all walks of life are excelling in their fields because they use whole brain thinking. who excel in their lives >> Want to join their ranks?

Until the last 20 years, brain scientists believed neurons communicated to each other, represented our thoughts, and that glia represented the cement  holding the brain together.  They were considered to be mere insulators for neurons. 

But recently scientists have begun to focus on a particular type of glial cell – astrocytes — that are very abundant in the cortex. Interestingly, we humans have the most, and the biggest, astrocytes in our cortex. 

Scientists have discovered that astrocytes are the adult stem cell in the brain. They also communicate among themselves via calcium waves, and are  capable of sending information to neurons. They also control blood flow to important regions of activity in the brain.  

Harvard University’s Stephen W. Kuffler was the first to discover that astrocytes exhibit an electrical potential, much like neurons. Since then many researchers have completed experiments on the ability of glial cells to communicate with neurons, and have discovered that glial cells respond to and release neuro transmitters just like neurons.

Astrocytes monitor neurons and can induce neurons to fire, and therefore modulate neuron behavior. Neuronal activity without astrocyte processing is a simple reflex — anything more complicated might require astrocyte intervention. This could mean that the calcium waves created by astrocytes are our thinking mind.

Not only will you not be as smart as you could be, your memory and judgment will also suffer. The results can vary from mildly irritating to truly disastrous.

For example, your 3-pound brain uses as much as 25% of the water you consume. Scientific studies have clearly shown that only 10% dehydration can reduce your measurable intelligence as much as 50%.

One glass of water may stand between you and 50% of your potential brain power.

Your brain also has a great need for fuel, just like your muscles and your bones. Your brain’s most basic food is glucose. If you eat a well-rounded diet not fast-food, chances are you’re providing your brain with a good supply of its basic fuel.

BUT… if you suffer from chronic stress, most of that fuel is going elsewhere. Stress literally starves your brain, kills brain cells, and reduces your potential brain power.

The stress response releases a natural biochemical called cortisol. Cortisol grabs your brain’s glucose then uses it to adapt your body to whatever is causing your stress it physically prepares your body to either fight or run.

That’s why it’s so hard to think clearly when you’re stressed. Ever run in circles trying to find your car keys when you’re in a big hurry?

Chronic stress, in turn, leads to the very real physical sensation of brain exhaustion.

Take the following steps to optimize your brain:

1. Make a commitment to eat properly. Provide your brain with a steady supply of healthy foods.

2. Drink adequate water: Coffee, tea and soda do NOT count. Eight glasses a day is truly the minimum. Remember, your brain needs 25% of that water just for itself.

3. Manage your stress: Find some way to take control of any chronic stress. Don’t kid yourself about this. Stress KILLS brain cells. Take a break every hour or so, and let your brain do some recovery work.

4. Take good vitamins or brain supplements: There are many valuable natural brain supplements available today. Add one to your daily diet for a mental boost and faster recovery from mental and physical stress.

Crank Up Your Energy — FAST.
The one thing that robs you of energy more than anything else is stress. Bust your stress in the Quantum Mind Power Gym. Just 10 minutes a few times a week will provide a dramatic boost in your energy levels. Click here.

Years of research shows that some very interesting changes in brainwave frequencies occur as people move toward higher states of mental awareness. And because such awareness shifts often occur to meditators, it is  useful to review the brainwave states experienced by meditators.

Beta Brainwaves
Beta brainwaves range from 12 to about 30 on-off cycles per second (cps), and are  associated with active thinking, speaking, and analyzing. As such, the meditator must quiet their Beta brainwaves  to successfully enter into a meditative state.

Alpha Brainwaves
When brainwave activity is focused primarily within the 8 to 11.9 cps range, Alpha brainwaves are produced if you are relaxed and your eyes are closed. When your brain is generating strong Alpha brainwaves, you tend to experience a pleasant, and mildly relaxed, yet wakeful, state of awareness.

The deeper the Alpha state, the more likely a meditator will experience visual imagery behind their closed eyes. Such a deeper Alpha state is often associated with increased activity in the lower Alpha brainwave range.

When an EEG is used to measure Alpha brainwaves, it is seen that they occur both in bursts (trains of waves) and pulses (single waves.) More advanced meditators tend to produce continuous trains of Alpha waves. Research has revealed that persons such as artists who tend to use the visual and spatial abilities characteristic of the right-brain tend to produce Alpha more easily than more analytical, left-brain thinkers.

It is often possible to determine whether or not a person meditates, and also how long they have been practicing,  by simply looking at their Alpha brainwaves. Beginning meditators usually produce faster 10 to 12 cps Alpha brainwaves. But the dominant Alpha frequency deepens with longer meditation practice, and meditators with ten years of experience produce lower Alpha in the 8 to 9 cps frequency range that borders their deeper Theta brainwaves.

Theta Brainwaves
Theta brainwaves occur in the 4 to 7.9 cps frequency range. To the non-meditator, Theta is primarily experienced as the mental state just prior to dropping off to sleep, and also REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.

But to the experienced meditator with a well-established Alpha state, Theta is often characterized by a peaceful sense of bliss and well-being marked by spontaneous creativity and deeply meaningful personal or transcendental imagery.

Delta Brainwaves
Delta brainwaves are the slowest brainwaves, and range from 0 to about 3.9 cps. The Delta state is normally primarily associated with deep sleep, although many interesting mental states occur in Delta to those tuned into these lower brainwaves on a conscious level.

Generally only the most advanced meditators can remain awake while producing Delta brainwaves. But some non-meditators also produce strong Delta states. Persons with natural ESP abilities, for example, are often able to focus consciously in the 3.8 to 3.9 cps range. And those with psychic abilities or deep intuition also tend to have more active Delta brainwaves.

Gamma Brainwaves
Gamma brainwaves are the fastest brainwave frequencies that have been commonly studied. Gamma brainwaves range from about 28 to 80+ cycles-per-second cps. Each cycle consists of an on peak, and an off valley.

Until recently, Gamma brainwaves were believed to be primarily present during highly focused mental activities or stress. But studies of expert meditators such as Tibetan Buddhist monks has shown that Gamma brainwaves in the 40 cps range are indicative of what experienced meditators describe as higher states mental clarity and insights.

For most people however, these potentially valuable high frequency Gamma brainwaves have little or nothing to do with higher states, and are more often only present during extreme stress.

 EXPERIENCE INSTANT DEEP MEDITATION. The average meditator spends up to ten years learning how to enter the deep meditation leading to higher states of consciousness. Come explore the web’s first and most complete brainwave training gym. It is as close as your computer, and cn take you all the way from initial Alpha relaxation  straight into advanced higher states experiences. synchronize your own brainwaves to create almost any state of mind or feeling you desire. Click here to learn more.

Today’s brain/mind researchers have identified the exact source of that strange sensation of a light bulb suddenly flashing in your brain — or an oddly pleasant buzzing sound inside your head.

What’s happening? You have simply slipped into the realm of  HQ — your Higher Intelligence.

What is HQ?
Your Higher Intelligence (HQ) is a fascinating mental state. While your IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence) operate on actual neural (brain cell) pathways or networks — your HQ is a rebel.

HQ, your most creative and inventive mental state, and does not seem to use any connections between your neurons at all. HQ experiences are accompanied by a spontaneous vibration of your cortex (your thinking cap) like an electrified bowl of jello.

That “ah ha” flash of light probably IS very real inside your brain, as suddenly your entire cortex is vibrating at a single coherent frequency, just like you ran a current of electricity through it.

Can HQ be Taught?
Interestingly, quite a bit of HQ experiences seem tied to the 7 Hz (cycles per second) and lower brainwave frequencies. And it also seems apparent tht an open A-T (alpha-theta)  bridge connecting the conscious and subconscious minds is esential. This could explain why your ah ha experience seems so fresh and remarkable — you have integrated two portions of your self that seldom meet face-to-face.

The secret of building your ability to experience HQ experiences is to strengthen this conscious-subconscious bridge. Check out=> A-T (alpha-theta) brainwave training.

Albert Einstein

You’ve heard the expressions “right brain” and left brain,” but do you know what these terms refer to? And what about “whole brain thinking?”

Your brain’s  cortex, your ”grey matter,” is the source of your analytical thinking ability. Your cortex is naturally divided into two sides that are connected by a very complex mass of nerve fibers called the corpus collosum.

For most people the left side of the cortex (your “left brain”) deals with logical thinking — anything connected to words, numbers, reasoning, and analysis. It also tends to operate in the Gamma and Beta brainwave frequencies.

The right side of the cortex, (your “right brain”) on the other hand, focuses on imagination, images, color, day-dreaming, visualization, and pattern recognition. It tends to generate the Alpha brainwaves that are so highly developed in meditators and artistic types

There’s a common assumption that each used either our right-brain or our left-brain.  So if that’s valid, then someone like Einstein would have used his left-brain, while someone like the great creative master photographer Ansel Adams would have focused on his  right-brain.

Does this assumption hold up? Actually Albert Einstein and  Ansel Adams’ personal notebooks reveal otherwise. Einstein credited his greatest scientific insights not to left-brain logic, but rather to his right-brain highly creative daydreaming. And Ansel Adams credited his greatest art photographs not to his right-brain artistic eye, but  to his left-brain detailed analytical note taking.

Our most powerful mental activities actually use both sides of your cortex simultaneously — whole brain thinking. If you say you are primarily creative or intuitive (right-brain dominated), or analytical and logical (left-brain dominant), you’re just describing your most highly developed mental skill — and the side of the cortex that is you’ve most highly developed.

But with the proper training, the other side of your cortex can also flourish and develop. This has the potential to literally DOUBLE your mind power, and increase your ability to do the whole brain thinking like Albert Einstein and Andel Adams..

Get Immediate Results
There’s an outrageously powerful way for you to immediately refine the non-dominant side of your cortex. Great athletes do it. So do top executives, famous artists, and people from all walks of life who seek to excel in their lives.

Scientists at UCLA have found that for middle-age and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and  improve brain function and cognitive ability.

“The study results indicate that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential (improve brain power) benefits for middle-aged and older adults,” said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. Small found that searching the internet engages complicated brain activity, and “may help exercise and improve brain function.”

As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, reductions in cell activity, and increases in deposits of plaques and tangles – all of which impact cognitive function. Small noted that pursuing activities that keep the mind engaged helps preserve brain health and cognitive ability.

The UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal research volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half of the study participants had experience searching the Internet, while the other half had no experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.

Study participants performed Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing brain scans that measured the level of cerebral blood flow during the cognitive tasks.

All study participants showed significant brain activity during the book-reading task, but internet searches revealed a major difference. While all participants demonstrated the same brain activity that was seen during the book-reading task, the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of the brain controlling decision-making and complex reasoning.

“Our most striking finding was that Internet searching appears to engage a greater extent of neural circuitry that is not activated during reading — but only in those with prior Internet experience,” said Small, who is also the director of UCLA’s Memory and Aging Research Center. In fact, researchers found that during Web searching, volunteers with prior experience registered a twofold increase in brain activation when compared with those with little Internet experience.

Compared with simple reading, the Internet requires making decisions about what to click on in order to pursue more information — an activity that engages cognitive circuits in the brain.”Searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in mid-age and older adults,” Small said.

Small added that the minimal brain activation in the less experienced Internet group may be due to participants not quite grasping the strategies needed to successfully engage in an Internet search.

“Emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults,” said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. Small found that searching the internet engages complicated brain activity, and “may help exercise and improve brain function.”

As we ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur in the brain, including atrophy, reductions in cell activity, and increases in deposits of plaques and tangles – all of which impact cognitive function. Small noted that pursuing activities that keep the mind engaged helps preserve brain health and cognitive ability.

The UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal research volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half of the study participants had experience searching the Internet, while the other half had no experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.

Study participants performed Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing brain scans that measured the level of cerebral blood flow during the cognitive tasks.

All study participants showed significant brain activity during the book-reading task, but internet searches revealed a major difference. While all participants demonstrated the same brain activity that was seen during the book-reading task, the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of the brain controlling decision-making and complex reasoning.

“Our most striking finding was that Internet searching appears to engage a greater extent of neural circuitry that is not activated during reading — but only in those with prior Internet experience,” said Small, who is also the director of UCLA’s Memory and Aging Research Center. In fact, researchers found that during Web searching, volunteers with prior experience registered a twofold increase in brain activation when compared with those with little Internet experience.

Compared with simple reading, the Internet requires making decisions about what to click on in order to pursue more information — an activity that engages cognitive circuits in the brain.”Searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults,” Small said. He added that the minimal brain activation in the less experienced computer group might have been because they did not  quite grasp the strategies of a successful Internet search.

In a Northwestern University study, EEG measures of brain activity were used to study how attention alters brain activity. The team of psychologists and neuroscientists used a new strategy for understanding the mechanisms whereby sustained attention and a focused brain makes us process things more effectively, literally making the world come into sharper focus.

They discovered that “when you pay focused attention cells aren’t only responding more strongly to stimuli,” said study co-author Marcia Grabowecky. “Rather a population of cells is responding more coherently. It is almost like a conductor stepping in to control a large set of unruly musicians in an orchestra so that they all play together. Cells synchronize precisely to the conductor’s cues.”

If you are stressed, it probably IS slipping, and could slip even more. Here’s what you need to know if you feel like you are losing your mental edge:

Such little memory problems are often be early warning signs of something that is PROVEN to destroy both long-term and short-term memory – stress.

What You Need to Know
Here’s what you need to know about your memory and stress: Both acute and long-term chronic secretion of stress hormones has a very bad effect on your brain.

Many prominent brain researchers have shown that sustained stress damages the hippocampus, the part of your brain that is central to learning and memory. The culprits are the steroid hormones secreted by your adrenal glands during stress — cortisol.

During a perceived threat, your adrenal glands immediately release adrenalin. But if the threat is severe or persists after a couple of minutes, the adrenals then also release cortisol. Once in the brain, cortisol remains much longer than adrenalin, where it continues to affect your brain cells.

Cortisol Affects Your Memory 
Have you ever forgotten something really important during a stressful situation? Cortisol also interferes with the function of your neurotransmitters — the chemicals brain cells use to communicate with each other. This makes it difficult to think, or to retrieve both short-term and long-term memories.

That’s why people get befuddled and confused in a severe crisis. Their mind goes blank because the neural communication lines are down.” They can’t remember where the fire exit is, for example. And this is also why you can’t find your car keys when you are in a hurry, or forget the numbers 911 in an emergency.

Why You Can’t Remember When Stressed
The stress hormones released then divert glucose, your brain’s primary food, to your major muscles.  This is your body’s attempt to get your big muscles ready to either fight or run.

The problem is that the amount of glucose – hence energy – that reaches the brain’s hippocampus is then reduced. This creates an energy crisis in your brain’s hippocampus, the place where memories are created. This compromises  your brain’s ability to create new memories, and to recall old ones.

That may be why some people can’t remember a very traumatic event, and why short-term memory is usually the first casualty of age-related memory loss resulting from a lifetime of stress.

The Degenerative Cascade
Normally, in response to stress, the brain’s hypothalamus secretes a hormone that causes the pituitary gland to secrete another hormone that causes the adrenals to secrete cortisol.

When the levels of cortisol rise to a certain level, several areas of the brain (especially the hippocampus)  tell the hypothalamus to turn off the cortisol-producing mechanism. This is the proper feedback response.

But the hippocampus is easily damaged by the cortisol released by even mild long-term stress. In his book Brain Longevity, Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa describes how many older people have lost  up to 25% of the cells in their hippocampus.

So memory-damaging cortisol continues to be secreted. This causes more damage to the hippocampus, and even more cortisol production. Thus a degenerative cascade”starts, and is very difficult to stop.

How to Protect Your Brain Power|
This is why it is so very important to have and use a daily stress reduction regime. Stress is not to be ignored or allowed to just rage on. The damage to your brain can be serious.