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As you read about the nature and workings of your memory and about your brain's other major functions, you will realize the extraordinary extent of its capacity and potential. The Mind Map is a tool used to entice, delight, stimulate and challenge you. You will discover some astonishing facts about your brain and its function, and you will take the first major steps on the path to freedom of the mind.
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| What is a Mind Map? |
A Mind Map is a highly effective way of getting information in and out of your brain - it is a creative and logical means of note-taking and note-making that literally "maps out" your ideas.
All Mind Maps have some things in common. They have a natural organizational structure that radiates from the center and use lines, symbols, words, color and images according to simple, brain-friendly concepts. A Mind Map converts a long list of monotonous information into a colorful, memorable and highly organized diagram that works in line with your brain's natural way of doing things.
One simple way to understand a Mind Map is comparing it to a map of a city. The city center represents the main idea; the main roads leading from the center represent the key thoughts in your thinking process; the secondary roads or branches represent your secondary thoughts, and so on. Special images or shapes can represent landmarks of interest or particularly relevant ideas.
The Mind Map is the external mirror of your own radiant or natural thinking facilitated by a powerful graphic process, which provides the universal key to unlock the dynamic potential of the brain.
The five essential characteristics of a Mind Map:
- The main idea, subject or focus is crystallized in a central image.
- The main themes radiate from the central image as 'branches'.
- The branches comprise a key image or word drawn or printed on its associated line.
- Topics of lesser importance are represented as 'twigs' of the relevant branch.
- The branches form a connected nodal structure.
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| The brain's natural architecture and foundation of Mind Maps |
Radiant Thinking® - a clearer, more natural and more efficient way of using our brains
What happens in your brain when you taste a ripe pear, smell flowers, listen to music, watch a stream, touch a loved one, or simply reminisce? The answer is both simple and amazingly complex. Each bit of information entering your brain, every sensation, memory or thought, which incorporates every word, number, code, food, fragrance, line, color, image, beat, note and texture can be represented as a central sphere from which radiate tens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of hooks. Each hook represents an association, and each association has its own infinite array of links and connections. From this gigantic information processing ability and learning capacity derives the concept of Radiant Thinking of which the Mind Map is a manifestation. Your brain's Radiant Thinking pattern may thus be seen as a gigantic Branching Association Machine - a super bio computer with lines of thought radiating from a virtually infinite number of data nodes.
State-of-the-Art Research into the Left and Right Hemispheres
Almost the moment Mind Maps came into use another major piece of scientific research confirmed their validity as a brain-compatible thinking method. In California, Dr. Roger Sperry, who won a Nobel Prize for his research, confirmed that the evolutionarily latest part of the brain, the 'thinking cap' of the Cerebral Cortex, was divided into two major hemispheres, and those hemispheres performed a comprehensive range of intellectual tasks, called cortical skills. The tasks included: Logic, Rhythm, Lines, Color, Lists, Daydreaming, Numbers, Imagination, Word, Gestalt (seeing the whole picture). Sperry's own research confirmed that the more these activities were integrated, the more the brain's performance became co-operative, with each intellectual skill enhancing the performance of other intellectual areas. When you are Mind Mapping®, you are not only practicing and exercising the fundamental memory powers and information processing, you are also using your entire range of cortical skills.
The Mind Map is made even more powerful by the use of all the left and right brain-thinking tools, which enhance the clarity, structure and organization of your thinking. And because the Mind Map constructively uses the tools of Imagination, Association and Location, as well as the tools of the left and right brain, you can consider the Mind Map the ultimate thinking tool that incorporates all the significant and potent ways of thinking into its own structure.
The Power of Images
If the Radiant Thinking ability of the brain can be applied to the 'left cortical skill' of words, can the same power be applied to the 'right cortical skill' of imagination and images? In 1970 Scientific American magazine published Ralph Haber's research showing that individuals have a recognition accuracy of images between 85 and 95 percent. There is a well-known quote, "A picture is worth a thousand words". We associate and remember images because they make use of a massive range of your cortical skills, especially imagination. Images can be more evocative than words, more precise and potent in triggering a wide range of associations, thereby enhancing creative thinking and memory. These findings support the argument that the Mind Map is a uniquely appropriate tool. It not only uses images, it is an image.
What are the applications and advantages of Mind Maps?
Mind Maps can be applied to every aspect of life where improved learning and clearer thinking will enhance human performance.
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| Education |
Students of all ages have discovered the advantages of applying Mind Maps to their studies. Whether you are note-taking from a teacher, a book, a computer or a video, or note-making for an essay, a report, or a web site, the simple, flexible collection of the key data facilitates the processes of learning, thinking, ordering, creating and remembering. Furthermore, all subjects areas and textbooks can be Mind Mapped.
Mind Maps are also brilliant route-maps for the memory, allowing you to organize facts and thoughts in such a way that your brain's natural way of working is engaged right from the start. Traditional note-taking methods:
- obscure the key words and information
- are not easily memorable
- waste time with the quantity of connecting words
- are not using all the cortical skills, and so do not creatively stimulate the brain
Mind Maps on the other hand:
- assist with the brain's ability to concentrate
- allow the essence of the material to become evident
- make visually apparent the relative order of information
- make connections between ideas easy to see
- boost our confidence in our ability to learn
And so Mind Maps keep the "love of learning" alive.
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| Business |
It is easy to see how placing any
word/image in the center of a page, and then allowing the Radiant Thinking
associations to occur, quickly generates a vast and unique collection of
related ideas. As classical brainstorming provides a great diversity of ideas,
each individual involved in creating a Mind Map becomes an extremely valuable
part of the process. It is therefore the perfect tool for business people to
share ideas and build-up information for a particular subject.
Mind Maps:
- organize and clarify
- thinking about an idea
- save time
- generate new ideas
- make fresh connections between ideas
- concentrate and keep track of a topic
- give a good overview
- remember far more far better
- make sharing ideas easier, faster and more fun.
This means workers can operate far more effectively, generate more stimulating ideas and essentially, people become more effective in their jobs.
In summary, Mind Mapping® has a whole range of advantages that help make your life easier and more successful. The Mind Map helps you to gather more information, organize the information and gain immediate access to that information when you need it again.
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| Computers, Mind Maps and OpenMind |
The advent of the personal
computer has caused a revolution in how we work and think. An endless number of
tasks that were once carried out on paper can now be done with a PC, and the
creation of Mind Maps is no exception. Features that make Mind Mapping on a
computer so attractive are:
- Information can be added as fast as you can type - and it is neat!
- Editing all aspects of the Mind Map is easy, without having to redo the whole Mind Map.
- Clipart, digital images, audio and video clips can be inserted.
- Colors can be added to words or branches to highlight associations.
- Connections are shown with easily generated links or arrows.
- A large Mind Map can be divided and linked to a new Mind Map file.
- A Mind Map does not have to be limited to the boundaries of a printed page.
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Examples 
