Page 51 - Mind Games The Aging Brain and How to Keep it Healthy

The Intelligent Mind • 35

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multiple intelligences. Gardner feels that too much impor-
tance has been placed on the types of skills and talents required
to score well on standardized intelligence tests. A person who
scores a high intelligence quotient (IQ) does so as the result of
performing well on certain linguistic, spatial, and mathemati-
cal tasks. Gardner holds that there are at least seven intelli-
gences that should be valued equally: linguistic, musical,
logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist,
and personal (which includes interpersonal and intrapersonal).
We will designate general sites for each of these mental
activities within the brain. Remember that we are choosing
the left hemisphere as the dominant hemisphere. If you are
right-hemisphere dominant, you should switch the desig-
nated locations shown here to the other side of the brain.
Also, when we discuss an activity (for example, mathemat-
ics), we will point out the area in which research shows the
activity is concentrated. However, when you actually “do
math” in a practical application, other areas of the brain,
such as language and spatial abilities, usually are involved.
One area is not independent of the others.

Linguistic Intelligence
“The Father of Waters rolls unvexed to the sea” was General
Grant’s telegraph to President Lincoln on the fall of Vicks-
burg during the Civil War. What a melodic, stunning report.
Someone not so facile with the language might have said,
“Enemy defeated at Vicksburg. Mississippi River now under
Union control.” Lincoln, himself, days later while delivering
the Gettysburg Address, used the robust passage “Four score
and seven years ago” to replace the austere phrase “In 1776.”
Some people, such as Grant and Lincoln, possess such a
high linguistic intelligence that their ability to create finely
crafted sentences progresses beyond precision and accuracy
into the realm of an art form. Whereas the left hemisphere spe-
cializes in understanding literal meaning, there is good evi-
dence that the right hemisphere helps in understanding and
generating metaphors, humor, and irony. Subjects with dam-
age to the right hemisphere understand words in an extremely