Brain teaser game to stimulate your temporal lobes

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Do you know where words are stored in your brain?

In your tem­po­ral lobe!

As you know, the 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 men­tal 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

Pascale Michelon— 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.

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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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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Barbara says

    I joined Car­la on FISH for 4 and Jane on SLAM for 9, so a few of us are diverg­ing togeth­er at least. Also had GREEN for tree/car, which makes sense to me; I dri­ve a red hybrid.

  4. Rosette says

    I was think­ing of “ancient” for num­ber 10, but I guess I would annoy a good num­ber of moms out there, includ­ing myself! Belat­ed Hap­py Moth­er’s Day!

  5. Pat says

    I love to do these lit­tle games. The short­er, the bet­ter. I got 6 and felt very dumb…

  6. liz says

    army — water: gun
    pil­low — court: case
    Tech­ni­cal­ly ten­nis rac­quet not rack­et I got white for ten­nis and noise (you wear ten­nis whites and Wim­ble­don and of course white noise). I also could not get beyond butt for plumber and smoker !!!

  7. Fatimah says

    for #10, what if you spell Mom­my cor­rect­ly in your brain? — then could this be the rea­son it’s hard­er to asso­ciate the two?

    I also agree brain exer­cis­es should be used more in less edu­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ties in order to (help) com­bat the edu­ca­tion­al gap that exist in America.

    I won­der if their are any cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences when it comes to brain exer­cise, are oth­er coun­tries ( like Asia ) already imple­ment­ing this idea with their children?

  8. Alvaro says

    Hel­lo Fatimah,

    We believe every sin­gle human being can ben­e­fit. Less edu­cat­ed and more edu­cat­ed. And the research shows that is the case…no one is “too educated”.

    There cer­tain­ly are dif­fer­ent approach­es in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. We dis­cussed this a bit with Eric Jensen
    https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/03/12/brain-connection-eric-jensen-on-learning-and-the-brain/

    How­ev­er, no coun­try is per­fect. Some edu­ca­tion sys­tems implic­it­ly focus on atten­tion and mem­o­ry, oth­ers on cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty, oth­ers on abstract thinking…it will be fas­ci­nat­ing to observe how coun­tries incor­po­rate find­ings from cog­ni­tive sci­ence into their poli­cies to help edu­cate cit­i­zens who can suc­ceed and pros­per in a more glob­al­ized world.

  10. sue says

    I got can­teen for army-water, and post for bed-paper. It took me a long time to get just 5.

  12. Myrrha says

    For num­ber 10 (Egypt­ian, Moth­er), I wrote Sun or Son.
    Because I told myself that the Egyp­tians wor­ship the sun, and the cre­ator of the puz­zle would­n’t have writ­ten “Moth­er”, if the per­son did­n’t have a child. Or else they would have writ­ten “Woman”. Aaah…

  13. Candice says

    What about ‘Goose’ for no. 10? As in Egypt­ian Goose and Moth­er Goose’s rhymes? or does­n’t that count?

  14. Rah says

    How about “cross­ing” for no. 4? I know per­haps it should be cross­ing “eyes” but no. 2 is “deck” with “card”.

    I just thought of anoth­er — guard: school guard / eye guard.

  15. D. says

    What hap­pens when you do this excer­cise in anoth­er lan­guage? For instance, I am not an Eng­lish native speak­er… I am using same parts of the brain / same process while doing this excer­cise in English?

  16. Bobby Shafto says

    Like oth­ers, I had Board for #2, and chain for #11 — a plumbers chain being a type of wrench that can tight­en or loosen round objects like pipes. I don’t think mum­my is a good answer to #10 because a moth­er mum­my does­n’t make sense, and mum­my as an alter­nate to moth­er does not belong in the set of oth­er answers (none of which are alter­nates to either of the clues). I’d sug­gest Pearl as an alter­na­tive answer.

  18. stephanie says

    I got park for 3(cars dont have a trunk in europe),board for 2 and pis­tol for 8.

  19. stuart says

    I had ‘marines for #8, lat­er I thought, what about ‘jack­et’. It goes with ‘army’ and a water jack­et is part of an engine

  20. Enid says

    I think I was lucky with this as I was edu­cat­ed in UK and live in Cana­da, so I had the best of both worlds for word mean­ing. I also got board for #2. Thanks for this I had such trou­ble with the short­term mem­o­ry game I was quite depressed. But like any­thing else I had to apply myself. My grade school teacher would be proud! I find the best way to tack­le a mem­o­ry prob­lem (or any prob­lem) is to walk away and do some­thing else ( I cleaned the bath­room) and some of the answers popped into my head as I worked. Ligth­t­en up on your­self and try again. Thanks again.

  24. Larry says

    #9 was my prob­lem. Ten­nis Rac­quet and Noise Rack­et did not fol­low “always spelled the same.”

  25. sjp says

    I got mud for #6. mud mon­ey & mud riv­er… as in dirty mon­ey & dirty river

    Note for Lar­ry: Ten­nis Rac­quet is also spelled as Ten­nis Racket. 🙂