Do you know where words are stored in your brain…?

In your tem­po­ral lobe! (in green on this pro­file view of the right side of your brain).

As you know your brain has two sides (two hemi­spheres) con­nected by the cor­pus cal­lo­sum. So you have one tem­po­ral lobe on each side of the brain.

If you are right-handed, your lan­guage is stored mostly in your left tem­po­ral lobe. If you are left-handed, you are not so lat­er­al­ized and your lan­guage is stored a bit on both sides of your brain in the tem­po­ral lobes.

Words in the brain are not stored ran­domly. They seemed to be quite orga­nized. Research has shown that words that are often heard together (such as salt and pep­per) or words that share some mean­ing (such as nurse and doc­tor) are con­nected or asso­ci­ated in the brain. Once you hear one, the other is activated.

Here is a brain exer­cise whose aim is to stim­u­late the con­nec­tions or asso­ci­a­tions between words in your tem­po­ral lobe.

In the left col­umn you have a pair of words. Your goal is to find a third word that is con­nected or asso­ci­ated with both of these two words.

The first pair is PIANO and LOCK. The answer is KEY. The word key is con­nected with both the word piano and the word lock: there are KEYS on a piano and you use a KEY to lock doors.

Key is what is called a homo­graph: a word that has more than one mean­ing but is always spelled the same.

Ready to stim­u­late con­nec­tions in your tem­po­ral lobe(s)? Enjoy! (Solu­tions are below. Please don’t check them until you have tried to solve all the pairs!)

1. LOCK — PIANO

2. SHIP — CARD

3. TREE — CAR

4. SCHOOL — EYE

5. PILLOW — COURT

6. RIVER — MONEY

7. BED — PAPER

8. ARMY — WATER

9. TENNIS — NOISE

10. EGYPTIAN — MOTHER

11. SMOKER — PLUMBER

— This arti­cle was writ­ten by Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., for SharpBrains.com. Dr. Mich­e­lon has a Ph.D. in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy and has worked as a Research Sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in Saint Louis, in the Psy­chol­ogy Depart­ment. She con­ducted sev­eral research projects to under­stand how the brain makes use of visual infor­ma­tion and mem­o­rizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Fac­ulty at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity, and teaches Mem­ory Work­shops in numer­ous retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties in the St Louis area.

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Solu­tions

1. LOCK -  PIANO > KEY

2. SHIP — CARD > Deck

3. TREE — CAR > Trunk

4. SCHOOL -  EYE > Pupil (Exam and Pri­vate are also possible)

5. PILLOW -  COURT  > Case

6. RIVER — MONEY > Bank (Flow is also possible)

7. BED — PAPER > Sheet

8. ARMY — WATER > Tank

9. TENNIS — NOISE > Racket

10. EGYPTIAN — MOTHER > Mummy

11. SMOKER — PLUMBER > Pipe

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