‘You’re stuck with being a genius whether you want to be or not,’ says Tony Buzan . ‘The thing you have between your ears is an organ of previously unimagined ability. Now all you have to do is learn how to use it.’

Ever since I saw a re-run of Use Your Head on TV in my late teens I have been a fan of Tony Buzan. Tony is one of the world’s leading experts on the brain and learning techniques having authored and co-authored over 80 books on the subject. He is the inventor of Mind Mapping® and recently gave a talk at a local bookstore on his background and his latest work on Multiple Intelligences. I took the opportunity to speak with him and find out more about some of his latest research into the brain and intelligence.

During his talk he related some experiences that he had had with his formal education that had started him thinking about thinking. He recalled that he began to question the relevance of the tests he was taking at school, when, at seven years old, he got a perfect score on one particular nature test. Even though he was now top of the top class Tony knew that his best friend knew far more about the subject of nature than he did, yet his friend was at the bottom of the bottom class. He started asking a significant question in relation to the school’s assessment of intelligence – ‘Who says?’ He wanted to know who said who was intelligent, what was intelligence and who defined it. After that particular instance he started questioning what and how he was being taught, and added with a certain sense of pride ‘I became a disruptive student – always asking “Why?”’

His quest for an understanding of intelligence began to solidify when he was about twenty and studying at university. Tony went into the library having decided that it would be a good idea to find out how to use his brain. When he asked the librarian where he might find such a book he was directed to the medical section. He explained to the librarian that he didn’t want to operate on the brain, or take it out, he just wanted to learn how to use it. The response he got was, “Oh, there are no books on that.” He was surprised at the fact that there was no ‘operations manual’ for this amazing bio-computer that everyone possessed and decided to make the study of the brain his main hobby.

TIM KENNING: For the last 30 years you have been studying the brain, how it functions and what it’s potential could be. So, what is “thinking”?

TONY BUZAN: I have many, many definitions depending on different perspectives. Primarily, thinking is the translation of sensory stimuli into an appropriate network of thought. Those networks of thought are primarily based on sensory input and the associations between the different ‘atoms’ of thought. You can on one deep level describe thinking as an ‘internal internet’ of images in appropriate associational arrangements. Creative thinking is where you are finding new, and ideally original and newly thought fresh assumptions between the data you thought and the data you have already assimilated.

TFK: Are you familiar with the work of George Lakoff, who wrote Metaphors We Live By, and talks about the ‘Embodied Brain?’

TB: I’m not familiar with his work but I have heard of embodied brain. Way back Aristotle said the highest sign of intelligence was to think in metaphor and I agree with that. And I know that the definition of thinking for the last couple of hundred years has been assumed by most of the great philosophers and educators to be a verbal process - which is horrifying! Verbal processing in terms of thinking is one of the main branches, but it is not all there is to thinking. Verbal thinking is a subset of thinking, and a very important subset, but we primarily think in these giant images from which radiate out associations and we make linkages between these images in our heads.

TFK: So where does language fit in? What is language?

TB: Language is the translation of the images in your head into sound symbols that you can transmit to someone else. The other people hears those sounds and translate them into images in their heads.

TFK: Given that people can represent the same experience differently those images will be different.

TB: Yes. If I say, for example, ‘I like cats,’ we can agree on that and ‘understand’, yet have completely different internal images in respect to that.

TFK: I thought it was a good musical.

TB: Exactly!

TFK: What happens when people change their minds?

TB: A number of things happen. First behaviour immediately changes in the direction of that decision. Secondly, more synaptic physical connections happen within the brain around that decision. So the probability of action increases. Thirdly the environment begins to respond differently to the individual. The delightful aspect of that is that the universe is very fair. It gives you incredibly immediate and meaningful feedback. If you change your mind in a positive direction it gives you positive feedback. It gives you additional health, it gives you a more alert and physically integrated bio-computer – your brain. It has the environment support you. You’ll also get appropriate negative feedback as well.

TFK: How has your thinking changed over the years?

TB: My thinking has been changed over time by the growing realisation that I fundamentally didn’t know how to handle my school and university life. I did not do as well in exams as I could or should have been able to. I was wasting masses of time mismanaging myself. I was not able to organise research and the production of essays based on that research. I was a fairly fast reader and even that was totally inadequate to the demands of the information I was being asked to read.

TFK: Is this how Mind Maps® came about?

TB: Yes. I noticed to my amazement, surprise and confusion that the more notes I made the worse my memory became, and I couldn’t understand why - because it seemed as if the opposite should be the case. Then it dawned on me when I began to study the way the brain functions – neuro-physiology, biology and psychology - that my notes were monochrome; mono tone; monotonous; boring and of course I forgot them.

TFK: Was there a moment that you can identify when everything fell into place?

TB: No, there were a series of moments. There was the moment when I realised that in the panic cramming situation before exams, what I instinctively and desperately did was to try and make up what were then called ‘cheat cards’. These are where you just literally tried to get all the information from a subject into five or ten small cards, with key words and starring the important points. I realised that you could actually condense a massive subject into as few as ten cards. They were still inadequate but they were better than my notes. The idea of condensing things into key words and elements was a major realisation.

Then in that same desperation I realised that if I underlined and boxed the super important things in red it would help me remember. Then I began to study the great memory systems that the Indians, Arabs, Hebrews and the Greeks used and I began to realise that despite all my academic training to be logical, verbal and mathematical it was in fact my imagination that was the key to all this. Memory depended upon imagery and association, and that was another massive realisation: my notes needed imagery. They needed colour and linkage.

Then I was studying Da Vinci and he came up with the realisation that everything is in some way connected to everything else. Which had been a growing awareness for me anyway in my study of General Semantics. Suddenly it then clicked - everything connects to everything else. The brain is radiant rather than linear in its thinking. It requires images, colours and associations. It requires key words and emphasis. When you put all those things together you end up with the inevitability of a Mind Map®. The left-brain research came after I had invented Mind Maps® and simply confirmed them.

Another realisation related to standard IQ, which measures verbal and mathematical reasoning. I was a member of Mensa the high IQ society, and the editor of the Mensa International Journal. I was studying intelligence, which I had always thought was standard IQ, when I began to realise that there were multiple intelligences. That once again led me into the fields of art and imagination and creativity. I realised suddenly that standard IQ was not what it was all about. My notes had been standard IQ in that they had been words and numbers. I had missed out the entire universe of my imagination and creativity. My notes had to incorporate standard IQ and creative IQ and those notes were inevitably Mind Maps®.

TFK: As well as Mind Maps® you also have a trademark on something called Mental Literacy®. What is that?

TB: Mental Literacy® relates to the brain and the body, understanding of the behaviours of the brain, memory, creativity thinking and logic. It is the understanding of the make–up of the component parts of the brain, brain cells the functions of the left and right cortex, the inter-relationship with each other, the behaviours and physiology; the understanding of the relationship between the brain and the body, and their interplay.

You are mentally literate if you understand your brain’s behaviours, your brain’s make-up, your body’s make up the relationship between the brain and the body and you put that into appropriate practice.

TFK: With your model of the Multiple Intelligences you have made distinctions for ten different intelligences - from the standard verbal and numeric, through to emotional, spiritual and sexual. What do all these intelligences have in common?

TB: If you regard this planet as one big ‘IQ test’ then these intelligences are what allow you to pass this ‘test.’  The Multiple Intelligences are what enable you to survive and function on this planet.

TFK: What is the difference between intelligence and skills?

TB: This is the subject of great debate in psychology. My own interpretation is that there fundamentally isn’t any difference between intelligence and skills. If you have a skill it is usually the result of practice. Skill is the result of applied intelligence over time and the more you can get the correct formulas the better it is. What we are now discovering in terms of the brain is that there are correct formulas and incorrect formulas in relation to using your Multiple Intelligences.

TFK: Finally, what one piece of advice would you give to someone?

TB: Make a hobby of your brain. Because it will feed you phenomenal rewards - The more you find out about it the more it gives you back and its potential for giving is infinite.