logic

Brain teaser to test your pattern recognition: Fill the void

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Pattern Recognition Test - Empty Triangle

Here’s a quick brain teas­er pro­vid­ed by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. Which num­ber should be placed in the emp­ty tri­an­gle, and why?

This brain teas­er helps you work out your exec­u­tive functions–supported by your frontal lobes– such as pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic.

Let us know below how you do and whether you have alter­na­tive answers that also work! [Read more…] about Brain teas­er to test your pat­tern recog­ni­tion: Fill the void

Challenge your mind with this logic brain teaser: Which direction is the bus going?

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Can you see the bus above?

Assum­ing it is mov­ing for­ward, in which direc­tion do you think it’s trav­el­ing, right or left?

Please try answer­ing on your own before check­ing below… [Read more…] about Chal­lenge your mind with this log­ic brain teas­er: Which direc­tion is the bus going?

Brain teaser to challenge your frontal lobes

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Here is a fun brain teas­er from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Carroll.

Tip­ping the Scales

free brain teasers for frontal lobes

Ques­tion:
The top two scales in the image at the right are in per­fect bal­ance. How many dia­monds will be need­ed to bal­ance the bot­tom set?

This puz­zle helps you work out your exec­u­tive func­tions –sup­port­ed in the frontal lobes— by using your pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic.

ANSWER:

Four dia­monds

SOLUTION:

First add up the num­ber of clubs in the first two scales (5). Then count how many clubs are in the bot­tom scale (5). The do the same with the spades, which gets you 5 and 5. There are 4 dia­monds in the top two bal­anced scales. There­fore, it must take 4 dia­monds to bal­ance the third scale since all the oth­er mea­sure­ments are the same.

More brain teasers and games for adults of any age:

New Interview Series (Part 1 of 10): Why Care About Brain Fitness Innovation?

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Every Mon­day dur­ing the next 10 weeks we’ll dis­cuss here what lead­ing indus­try, sci­ence and pol­i­cy experts –all of whom will speak at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (March 30th — April 1st, 2011)– have to say about emerg­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges to address, over the next 10 years, the grow­ing brain-relat­ed soci­etal demands.

With­out fur­ther ado, here you have what four Sum­mit Speak­ers say…

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Alvaro Pas­cual-Leone is the Direc­tor of the Beren­son-Allen Cen­ter for Non-Inva­sive Brain Stim­u­la­tion at Har­vard Med­ical School.

1. How would you define “brain fit­ness” vs. “phys­i­cal fitness”?

Phys­i­cal fit­ness can refer to an over­all or gen­er­al state of health and well-being. How­ev­er, it is also often used more specif­i­cal­ly to refer to the abil­i­ty to per­form a giv­en activ­i­ty, occu­pa­tion, or sport.

Sim­i­lar­ly brain fit­ness might be used to refer to a gen­er­al state of healthy, opti­mized brain func­tion, or a more spe­cif­ic brain-based abil­i­ty to process cer­tain, spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion, enable cer­tain motor actions, or sup­port cer­tain cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. Impor­tant­ly though, I would argue [Read more…] about New Inter­view Series (Part 1 of 10): Why Care About Brain Fit­ness Innovation?

On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not

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Where does our “Feel­ing of Know­ing” come from? Have you ever felt cer­tain that you knew an answer even though you could­n’t think of it right off? Where does that “feel­ing of know­ing” come from? The answer to this ques­tion is the focus of neu­rol­o­gist Robert Bur­ton’s new book On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not.

I recent­ly reviewed Dr. Bur­ton’s book on the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast and last week I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­view him for the show. He explained that one of the ori­gins for his book was his expe­ri­ence with patients with con­di­tions like Cotard’s syn­drome (where the patient thinks he is dead or does not exist). What Dr. Bur­ton calls the “feel­ing of know­ing” is so strong that peo­ple con­sis­tent­ly trust it even when their beliefs con­tra­dict the evi­dence. At first it might seem sur­pris­ing that this feel­ing is gen­er­at­ed at an uncon­scious lev­el in our brain, yet the same sort of pro­cess­ing cre­ates the world we see and hear. It is well-known that what we see is not what enters our eyes, but [Read more…] about On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not

Mind Teaser: Consider Linda

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(I hope you enjoy this very reveal­ing mind teaser!)

Please con­sid­er Lin­da, a 31-year-old woman, sin­gle and bright. When she was a stu­dent, both in high school and col­lege, she was deeply con­cerned with dis­crim­i­na­tion and social jus­tice, and also par­tic­i­pat­ed in anti-nuclear protests.

Which is more prob­a­ble about Lin­da’s occu­pa­tion today? (a) Lin­da is a bank teller; (b) Lin­da is a bank teller and active in the envi­ron­men­tal movement.

Quick, what’s your answer? (a) or (b)?

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If you answered (b), you are wrong, and in good com­pa­ny. That’s what most of my col­leagues and I answered the first time we saw this teas­er in one of our Stan­ford Orga­ni­za­tion­al Behav­ior classes.

It is more prob­a­ble that Lin­da is a bank teller, which is a whole cat­e­go­ry, that she is both a bank teller AND also active in the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment, which is a sub­set of that whole category.

A recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle explains the phenomenon:

Free to Choose, But Often Wrong:

“When psy­chol­o­gists Daniel Kah­ne­man and the late Amos Tver­sky con­duct­ed an exper­i­men­tal sur­vey in the ear­ly 1980s ask­ing peo­ple to answer this sim­ple ques­tion, they dis­cov­ered, to their sur­prise, that most respon­dents picked “b,” even though this was the nar­row­er choice and hence the less like­ly one. It seems that salien­cy in this case, Lin­da’s pas­sion­ate polit­i­cal pro­file trumps logic.”

Relat­ed read­ing and teasers:

- Why Smart Brains Make Stu­pid Decisions

- 50 brain teasers to test your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty.