Brain Talk

Four-Year-Olds: Budding Lie Detectors A child’s cognitive development explodes around the age of four. They understand what people do is directly connected to what’s in their minds. They know that, if they can figure out what’s going on in your head, they can predict what you’re going to do. As we saw in the Sally-Anne test, four-year-olds can also detect false beliefs. They can pick up on big lies as well as little “white” ones. For instance, let’s say your four-year-old daughter accompanies you to the shopping mall; and while you’re there, you walk past a pet store with rabbits in the window for sale. When you get home, your daughter asks if she can have a bunny rabbit. You

Ming Mapping in Children MIND MAPPING IS SUCH AN INTRINSIC PART of being human that it shouldn’t surprise us how quickly it emerges in children. But once you realize the full extent of this, you’ll never look at kids the same way again. Especially if you’re a parent. Knowing your kids are tracking you all the time makes you realize what most parents want to avoid: You’re living under the spotlight of constant scrutiny. How you respond determines the sort of relationships you’ll have with your children throughout your lifetime. Implicit Mind Mapping Signs of mind mapping emerge soon after birth. Babies begin sharing eye contact (“mutual gaze”) with caretakers when they’re three months old. This interpersonal communication is an

The Nuts and Bolts of Mind Mapping I love studying mind mapping because it reveals the incredibly sophisticated processes your brain goes through to accomplish things we all take for granted. For instance, when making a mental map of another person’s mind, your brain has to keep track of whose thoughts are whose in your own mind. Are you picturing your own thoughts and feelings or someone else’s? It turns out one part of your reptilian brain is responsible for representing the contents of your own mind while another part tracks the minds of others. Your brain also relies on two separate but related “attention networks” to alternately focus your concentration. Your “dorsal” system tracks other people while your “ventral”

The Brain Science Behind Mind Mapping MIND MAPPING IS THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS of what people used to refer to as “folk psychology.” Folk psychology offered simple, direct explanations of our ability to predict other people’s behavior using everyday reasoning and basic assumptions about human nature. “People seek pleasure and avoid pain” is a good example of folk psychology. However, lots of research has been conducted on how your brain predicts what other people are going to do. In fact, it’s one of the hottest areas of modern brain science. We still have much to learn. But after reading hundreds of research articles, I’m thrilled by how much we actually know about how the brain pulls off this amazing feat. Theory

If You Want Great Sex… You use mind mapping every time you walk into a room full of strangers. The first thing you do is map everyone in the room, attributing personalities, agendas, and social status to those who are there. This helps you ascertain how you fit in: Which girl is the prettiest? Who’s the alpha male? Who should I talk to? What’s my role? Has anyone noticed me? Is anyone interested in me? Your mind wants to know where you stand in the social hierarchy. Mind-mapping helps you figure this out. These are some of the countless examples. In fact, I challenge you to imagine an interaction between two or more people where mind mapping doesn’t play a

What Is Mind Mapping? DURING MY CAREER AS A CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST I’ve learned many helpful things. But if you asked me to pick out what transformed my life and my work, the cutting-edge brain science of mind mapping would share top honors. For me learning about mind mapping was like learning about orgasms. I knew about sex long before I learned orgasms existed. When I finally discovered them from personal experience, I couldn’t believe they’d been happening all around me but that nobody had let me in on the secret! How could this be going on and no one told me?! That’s how I felt when I stumbled onto mind mapping in neurobiology research journals at the turn of this

Take a ninety-second animated tour of our latest book, Brain Talk. This fun video shows you the initial page of every chapter. You’ll understand Brain Talk in less than two minutes! « Brain Talk – Suggestions for Reading Brain Talk – Chapter Previews »

Based on my experiences doing therapy, training therapists, and lecturing about mind mapping, here are some suggestions on how best to read this book. Take these suggestions to heart and apply them from start to finish. I can’t stress enough how important they are to getting what this book has to offer. Here’s the first thing: Read Brain Talk differently than any of my prior books. Resist your urge to underline text or make notes. (Boy, is this a change! I previously suggested underlining.) Don’t read this as a collection of ideas. Don’t try to memorize passages of text. Don’t try to convert this to familiar terminology. Forgo your impulse to use deductive logic. Stop yourself from developing mental counterarguments. All of these use your left brain, which is