Reading: Think Smart: By: Richard Restak pages 151-178

Summary:
    In part five Restak talks about fashioning the creative brain. It begins by telling the reader that if they follow all the steps in the previous sections then you should see overall improvements in your brain's performance. The working memory will be strengthened, attention span increased, spelling and vocabulary improved, and visualization skills will be increased. Restak begins talking about sleep. Sleep is incredible for what it does for the brain. In a test conducted at Harvard university, those who learned some vocabulary words and then slept recalled 3 times as many words as those who did not sleep. This is because sleep enhances creative associations between the words on the memorized list, therefore, making connections. Dreams alone are not necessary though for memory because just sleep alone can help memory. This process takes place during REM or when we are dreaming, for during this time the brain is very active and weak associations are strengthened.
    Kenneth Heilman a professor of neurology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville says that creativity comes from the frontal lobes of the brain. They are critical for divergent thinking. Along with the frontal lobes creativity lies heavily in the right hemisphere of the brain. Creativity involves a shift from the problem solving left side of the brain to the right side. This shift causes those moments of Aha!
    One of the greatest attributes of the brain, but yet the hardest for most people to master is visual thinking. Picturing things in our minds can be very hard, but require complete concentration. Many of the great discoveries of our time have come from the ability to visualize. In fact, most scientists, artists, and inventors speak often of an image that inspired them instead of pure creation. Albert Einstein developed his theory of relativity by imagining how the movement of a person in one train would appear to an observer located in a second train running parallel to the first. Restak then gives the four steps to increase creativity. First, focus on the problem for as long as you need to understand it, the mentally put it into words your implicit assumptions. Third, Make certain that you understand what you must do to reach a resolution. And Finally, ask yourself "In what other ways can I envision this problem.
Response: 
    I found that this section was a little confusing to me. I'm definitely more of a left side brain thinker so I enjoy math and sciences, but when it comes to creativity I'm not too bad but I'm not great. This section had a few short creative brain puzzles in which I found myself over analyzing the problems and directions only to find out that the solutions were fairly simple. I also thought that the steps for increasing creativity were not very helpful because they were all very vague. However, although I didn't do very well on the problems I found them to be entertaining. I also found the sleep thing to be very interesting because this section was filled with accounts of scientists and students who made important discoveries and connections while dreaming.