The Sanskrit effect: How verbal recitation boosts cognitive function

Now, you can add chanting to your brain training regimen.

Handwritten Sanskrit script. (Image: Shutterstock)

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5 Ways Playing Chess Can Boost Your Mind and Your Life

The benefits of actively playing chess are supported by numerous studies. 

Want to transform your brain and make better decisions? Learn chess, a game synonymous with intelligence and brain power. It's been proven by numerous studies to help a variety of mind skills and has been growing in popularity around the world. 

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Visual Intelligence: Make Better High-Stakes Decisions

Amy Herman teaches visual intelligence to doctors, intelligence analysts and the NYPD. Here she runs through how to make decisions you can defend under questioning: ones that are perceptive and informed.

Amy Herman created and conducts all sessions of ‘The Art of Perception’, an education program that was initially used to help medical students improve their observation skills. Often in diagnostics, you’re not looking for what you can see, but what you can’t – this is called the 'pertinent negative'. The same goes for investigations, and so the program was adapted for the New York City Police Department, and other intelligence agencies. Really, Herman says, it’s about fine-tuning something we take as a given: our visual intelligence. This refers to the concept that we see more than we can possibly process. What we register is just a fraction of the world around us, so how can we see more? Like any other skill or muscle, to get the most and best use out of it, it needs training.

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