Mental Gymnastics Reading Answers

Jan 20, 2023

Mental Gymnastics Reading Answers is an academic reading topic and a detailed study about the excercise and workouts by the people of London. The given IELTS topic has been taken from the book named “E-ENG-school IELTS Reading Test With Answers Key (New Edition)”. The topic named Mental Gymnastics Reading Answers has 13 wide range of questions. There are two different sorts of questions, which are included in this topic, such as, Yes/No/Not Given, and choose the correct letter. The candidates should mandatorily read and skim through the IELTS reading passage in order to relate the synonyms and identify the keywords according to the given topic, and answer the below given questions accordingly. The candidates for their preparation of this section, can consider practice from the IELTS reading practice papers in order to score good in the reading section in which similar topics like Mental Gymnastics Reading Answers has been included.

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Section 1

Read the passage to answer the following questions

Mental Gymnastics Reading Answers

The working day has just started at the head office of Barclays Bank in London. Seventeen staff are helping themselves to a buffet breakfast as young psychologist Sebastian Bailey enters the room to begin the morning’s framing session. But this is no ordinary training session. He’s not here to sharpen their finance or management skills. He’s here to exercise their brains.
Today’s workout, organised by a company called the Mind Gym in London, is entitled “having presence”. What follows is an intense 90-minute session in which this rather abstract concept is gradually broken down into a concrete set of feelings, mental tricks and behaviours. At one point the bankers are instructed to shut then eyes and visualise themselves filling the room and then the building. They finish up by walking around the room acting out various levels of presence, from low-key to over the top.
It’s easy to poke fun. Yet similar mental workouts are happening in corporate seminar rooms around the globe. The Mind Gym alone offers some 70 different sessions, including ones on mental stamina, creativity for logical thinkers and “zoom learning”. Other outfits draw more directly on the exercise analogy, offering “neurobics” courses with names like “brain sets” and “cerebral fitness”. Then there are books with titles like Pumping Ions, full of brainteasers that claim to “flex your mind”, and software packages offering memory and spatial- awareness games.
But whatever the style, the companies’ sales pitch is invariably the same— follow our routines to shape and sculpt your brain or mind, just as you might tone and train your body. And, of course, they nearly all claim that their mental workouts draw on serious scientific research and thinking into how the brain works.
One outfit, Brainergy of Cambridge, Massachusetts (motto: “Because your grey matter matters”) puts it like this: “Studies have shown that mental exercise can cause changes in brain anatomy and brain chemistry which promote increased mental efficiency and clarity. The neuroscience is cutting-edge.” And on its website, Mind Gym trades on a quote from Susan Greenfield, one of Britain’s best known neuroscientists: “It’s a bit like going to the gym, if you exercise your brain it will grow.”
Indeed, die Mind Gym originally planned to hold its sessions in a local health club, until its founders realised where the real money was to be made. Modem companies need flexible, bright thinkers and will seize on anything that claims to create them, especially if it looks like a quick fix backed by science. But are neurobic workouts really backed by science? And do we need them?
Nor is there anything remotely high-tech about what Lawrence Katz, co- author of Keep Your Brain Alive, recommends. Katz, a neurobiologist at Duke University Medical School in North Carolina, argues that just as many of US fail to get enough physical exercise, so we also lack sufficient mental stimulation to keep our brain in trim. Sine we are busy with jobs, family and housework. But most of this activity is repetitive routine. And any leisure time is spent slumped in front of the TV.
So, read a book upside down. Write or brush your teeth with your wrong hand. Feel your way around the room with your eyes shut. Sniff vanilla essence while listening intently to orchestral music. Anything, says Katz, to break your normal mental routine. It will help invigorate your brain, encouraging its cells to make new connections and pump out neuroteophins, substances that feed and sustain brain circuits.
Well, up to a point it will. “What I’m really talking about is brain maintenance rather than bulking up your IQ,” Katz adds. Neurobics, in other words, is about letting your brain fulfill its potential. It cannot create super-brains. Can it achieve even that much, though? Certainly the brain is an organ that can adapt to the demands placed on it. Tests on animal brain tissue, for example, have repeatedly shown that electrically stimulating the synapses that connect nerve cells thought to be crucial to learning and reasoning, makes them stronger and more responsive. Brain scans suggest we use a lot more of our grey matter when carrying out new or strange tasks than when we’re doing well-rehearsed ones. Rats raised in bright cages with toys sprout more neural connections than rats raised in bare cages— suggesting perhaps that novelty and variety could be crucial to a developing brain. Katz, And neurologists have proved time and again that people who lose brain cells suddenly during a stroke often sprout new connections to compensate for the loss—especially if they undergo extensive therapy to overcome any paralysis.
Guy Claxton, an educational psychologist at the University of Bristol, dismisses most of the neurological approaches as “neuro-babble”. Nevertheless, there are specific mental skills we can learn, he contends. Desirable attributes such as creativity, mental flexibility, and even motivation, are not the fixed faculties that most of US think. They are thought habits that can be learned. The problem, says Claxton, is that most of US never get proper training in these skills. We develop our own private set of mental strategies for tackling tasks and never learn anything explicitly. Worse still, because any learned skill— even driving a car or brushing our teeth-quickly sinks out of consciousness, we can no longer see the very thought habits we’re relying upon. Our mental tools become invisible to US.
Claxton is the academic adviser to the Mind Gym. So not surprisingly, the company espouses his solution-that we must return our thought patterns to a conscious level, becoming aware of the details of how we usually think. Only then can we start to practise better thought patterns, until eventually these become our new habits. Switching metaphors, picture not gym classes, but tennis or football coaching.
In practice, the training can seem quite mundane. For example, in one of the eight different creativity workouts offered by the Mind Gym—entitled “creativity for logical thinkers” one of the mental strategies taught is to make a sensible suggestion, then immediately pose its opposite. So, asked to spend five minutes inventing a new pizza, a group soon comes up with no topping, sweet topping, cold topping, price based on time of day, flat-rate prices and so on.
Bailey agrees that the trick is simple. But it is surprising how few such tricks people have to call upon when they are suddenly asked to be creative: “They tend to just label themselves as uncreative, not realising that there are techniques that every creative person employs.” Bailey says the aim is to introduce people to half a dozen or so such strategies in a session so that what at first seems like a dauntingly abstract mental task becomes a set of concrete, learnable behaviours. He admits this is not a short cut to genius. Neurologically, some people do start with quicker circuits or greater handling capacity. However, with the right kind of training he thinks we can dramatically increase how efficiently we use it.
It is hard to prove that the training itself is effective. How do you measure a change in an employee’s creativity levels, or memory skills? But staff certainly report feeling that such classes have opened their eyes. So, neurological boosting or psychological training? At the moment you can pay your money and take your choice. Claxton for one believes there is no reason why schools and universities shouldn’t spend more time teaching basic thinking skills, rather than trying to stuff heads with facts and hoping that effective thought habits are somehow absorbed by osmosis.

Solution and Explanation

Questions 1-5:
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1 In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement is true
NO if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

Question 1: Mind Gym coach instructed employees to imagine that they are the building.

Answer: No
Supporting Sentence: At one point the bankers are instructed to shut their eyes and visualise themselves filling the room and then the building.
Keyword: Bankers, visualise, the building, levels of presence, low-key to over the top.
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, lines 4-5
Explanation: Lines 7-11 of paragraph B states that the bankers are told to close their eyes and imagine themselves filling the room and then the building at one point. This shows that rather than becoming the building, the staff were told to see themselves occupying the spaces and building. So, the above statement can be regarded as an incorrect statement.

Question 2: Mind Gym uses the similar marketing theory that is used all round.

Answer: Yes.
Supporting Sentence: Yet similar mental workouts are happening in corporate seminar rooms around the globe.
Keyword: similar, mental workouts, corporate seminar rooms, around the globe
Keyword Location: Paragraph C, lines 1-2
Explanation: Lines 1-2 of paragraph C suggests that yet comparable mental exercises are taking place in corporate conference rooms all across the world. Around 70 different courses are available at the Mind Gym alone, including ones on mental toughness, creativity for logical thinkers, and zoom learning. This shows that Mind Gym's mental exercises are practised all around the world. Therefore, the given sentence can be regarded as a correct one.

Question 3: Susan Greenfield is the founder of Mind Gym.

Answer: No.
Supporting Sentence: And on its website, Mind Gym trades on a quote from Susan Greenfield, one of the Britain’s best known neuroscientists: “It’s a bit like going to the gym, if you exercise you brain it will grow.”
Keyword: Website, Mind Gym, neuroscientists
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, lines 3-6
Explanation: Lines 3-6 of paragraph E suggests that neuroscience is cutting-edge technology. Additionally, Mind Gym uses a quotation from Susan Greenfield, a well-known neuroscientist in Britain, on its website. She compares it to going to the gym, saying that exercise causes the brain to grow. This demonstrates unequivocally that Susan Greenfield is a well-known neuroscientist in Britain and not the creator of Mind Gym. All these things sums up to a conclusion that Susan Greenfield is not the founder of the Mind Gym. So, it is an incorrect statement.

Question 4: All business and industries are using Mind Gym’s session globally.

Answer: No.
Supporting Sentence: The Mind Gym alone offers some 70 different sessions, including ones on mental stamina, creativity for logical thinkers and “zoom learning”.
Keyword: Mind Gym, alone offers, 70, different sessions
Keyword Location: Paragraph C, lines 1-2
Explanation: Lines 1-2 of paragraph C states that around the world, in the corporate seminar rooms, the same kind of mental exercises are being taught in 70 different sessions. This explains why not all businesses and industries utilise Mind Gym sessions globally and why only comparable ones are employed. It is not states anywhere that the Mind Gym’s session has been practiced by all the business and industries. Therefore, it is an incorrect statement.

Question 5: According to Mind Gym, extensive scientific background supports their mental training sessions.

Answer: Not Given.

Supporting Sentence: And, of course, they nearly all claim that their mental workouts draw on serious scientific research and thinking into how the brain works.

Keyword: all claim, mental workouts, serious, scientific research and thinking

Keyword Location: paragraph D, lines 2-4
Explanation: Lines 2-4 of paragraph D implies that almost all of them assert that their mental exercises are based on in-depth scientific research and analysis of how the brain functions. This shows that all businesses that provide mental fitness programs claim that their programmes are based on scientific study, but it is not noted that this claim was made expressly by Mind Gym. No relevant data regarding the above statement has been mentioned in the passage. So, the above statement can be regarded as an invalid statement.

Questions 6-13:
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet.

A. Guy Claxton
B. Sebastian Bailey
C. Susan Greenfield
D. Lawrence Katz

NB: You may use any letter more than once

Question 6: Inspiration to keep our brain fit. We do not have enough

Answer: Lawrence Katz
Supporting Sentence: Katz, a neurobiologist at Duke University Medical University Medical School in North Carolina, argues that just as many of US fails to get enough physical exercise, so we also lack sufficient mental stimulation to keep our brain in trim.
Keyword: Katz, neurobiologist, physical exercise, mental stimulation
Keyword Location: Paragraph G, lines 2-6
Explanation: Lines 2-6 of paragraph G suggests that Katz, a neurobiologist at Duke University Medical School in North Carolina, contends that, just as many of us don't get enough physical exercise, we also don't get enough mental stimulation to keep our brains in shape. We do have a lot going on with work, family, and housework. But the majority of this work is routine repetition. Additionally, any free time is squandered watching TV. This shows that according to Lawrence Katz, we do not receive enough inspiration to maintain the health of our brains. Hence, option D is the correct answer for this question.

Question 7: The more you exercise your brain like exercise in the gym, the more brain will grow.

Answer: Susan Greenfield
Supporting Sentence: And on its website, Mind Gym trades on a quote from Susan Greenfield, one of Britain’s best known neuroscientists: “It’s a bit like going to the gym, if you exercise your brain it will grow.”
Keyword: quote, Susan Greenfield, neuroscientists, exercise your brain it will grow
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, lines 4-6
Explanation: Lines 4-6 f paragraph E states that the brain's anatomy and chemistry can alter as a result of mental training, according to studies, and these changes can lead to improved mental agility and clarity. On the website, Mind Gym trades on a remark from Susan Greenfield, one of Britain's most well-known neuroscientists: "It's a bit like going to the gym, if you exercise your brain it will grow." This implies that Susan Greenfield is of the opinion that brain growth is correlated with mental exercises, such as that found in a gym. Therefore, option C is the correct one for this question.

Question 8: Exercise can keep your brain health instead of improving someone’s IQ.

Answer: Lawrence Katz
Supporting Sentence: “What I’m really talking about is brain maintenance rather than bulking up your IQ,” Katz adds.
Keyword: brain, maintenance, IQ, Katz adds.
Keyword Location: Paragraph I, lines 1-2
Explanation: Lines 1-2 of paragraph I states about a saying of Lawrence Katz. As per him, In other respects, neurotics is about allowing your brain to reach its full potential. Super-brains cannot be made by it. The brain is undoubtedly a flexible organ that can change to meet changing needs. Studies using animal brain tissue, for instance, have repeatedly demonstrated that electrically activating the synapses between nerve cells is thought to make them stronger and more receptive. Hence, option D is the right response.

Question 9: It is valuable for schools to teach students about creative skills besides basic known knowledge.

Answer: Guy Claxton
Supporting Sentence: Claxton for one believes there is no reason why schools and universities shouldn’t spend more time teaching basic thinking skills, rather than trying to stuff heads with facts and hoping that effective thought habits are somehow absorbed by osmosis.
Keyword: Claxton , Basic thinking skills, facts, effective thought habits
Keyword Location: Paragraph N, lines 4-7
Explanation: Lines 4-7 of paragraph N states that Claxton, for one, argues that there is no reason why schools and colleges should not spend more time teaching basic thinking abilities rather than cramming knowledge into students' brains and hoping that successful thought habits are learned through osmosis. This shows that Guy Claxton thinks it's important for schools to teach pupils creative skills in addition to fundamental knowledge. So, option A is the right answer.

Question 10: We can develop new neuron connections when we lose old connections via certain treatment.

Answer: Lawrence Katz
Supporting Sentence: Katz, And neurologists have proved time and again that people who lose brain cells suddenly during a stroke often sprout new connections to compensate for the loss – especially if they undergo extensive therapy to overcome any paralysis.
Keyword: Neurologists, brain cells, stroke, therapy
Keyword Location: Paragraph I, lines 10-12
Explanation: Lines 10-12 of paragraph I states that Lawrence Katz and neurologists have repeatedly demonstrated that persons who lose brain cells quickly during a stroke often sprout new connections to compensate for the loss, especially if they undergo prolonged therapy to overcome any disability. This demonstrates Katz's belief that we can make new neuron connections even after having a stroke and losing existing ones due to certain treatments, such as those used to cure paralysis. Hence, option D will be the right response.

Question 11: People usually mark themselves as not creative before figuring out there are approaches for each person

Answer: Sebastian Bailey
Supporting Sentence: But it is surprising how few such tricks people have to call upon when they are suddenly asked to be creative: “They tend to just label themselves as uncreative, not realizing that there are techniques that every creative person employs.”
Keyword: Tricks, creative, techniques
Keyword Location: Paragraph M, lines 1-3
Explanation: Lines 1-3 of paragraph M states that Sebastian Bailey concurs that the trick is simple and clear. But when people are suddenly pushed to be creative, it's astonishing how few of these tricks they can use. Instead of comprehending that, all creative people use certain strategies, they frequently merely categorize themselves as being uncreative. This shows that before recognizing the different options for each person, people tend to label themselves as not creative, according to Bailey. Hence, option B can be taken as a correct answer for this question.

Question 12: An instructor in Mind Gym who guided the employees to exercise.

Answer: Sebastian Bailey
Supporting Sentence: Seventeen staff are helping themselves to a buffet breakfast as young psychologist Sebastian Bailey enters the room to begin the morning’s framing session.
Keyword: Seventeen staff, buffet, breakfast, morning’s framing session.
Keyword Location: Paragraph A, lines 1-3
Explanation: Lines 1-3 of paragraph A suggests that as young psychologist Sebastian Bailey enters the room to begin the morning's training session, seventeen staff members help themselves to a buffet breakfast. This suggests that Sebastian Bailey is a Mind Gym instructor who led the staff members in excercise. Therefore, option B can be regarded as a best option in this regards.

Question 13: Majority of people don’t have appropriate skills-training for brain.

Answer: Guy Claxton
Supporting Sentence: The problem, says Claxton, is that most of US never get proper training in these skills.
Keyword: Claxton, US, proper training, skills
Keyword Location: Paragraph J, lines 5-7
Explanation: Lines 5-7 of paragraph 10 explains a problem as stated by Guy Claxton. The issue, according to Claxton, is that most of us never receive appropriate training in these skills. We never receive explicit instruction; instead, we create our own unique set of mental shortcuts for solving problems. This shows that, in Claxton's opinion, the bulk of people lack proper brain skills training. Therefore, option A is the right answer for the above question.