7/4/2019 #13. Brain teaser to exercise your cognitive skills: Where do words go?

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Jun 20, 2014

#13. Brain teaser to exercise your cognitive skills:

Where do words go?
By: Dr. Pascale Michelon

Words are stored in the temporal lobe of your brain (in green on the
cerebral cortex image  to the left). But on which brain hemisphere,
right or left? As you know, your brain has two sides (two hemispheres)
connected by the corpus callosum. You have one temporal lobe on
each side of the brain.

If you are right-handed, your language is stored mostly in your left

temporal lobe. If you are left-handed, you are not so lateralized and
your language is stored a bit on both sides of your brain, in the temporal lobes. Also, words that
are often heard together (such as salt and pepper) or words that share some meaning (such as
nurse and doctor) are connected or associated in the brain. Once you hear one, the other is often
activated.

Here is a brain teaser whose aim is to stimulate the connections or associations between
words in your temporal lobe. You will see pairs of words, and your goal is to find a third
word that is connected or associated with both of these two words.

For example, the first pair is PIANO and LOCK. The answer is KEY. The word key is connected with
both the word piano and the word lock: there are KEYS on a piano and you use a KEY to lock doors.
Key is what is called a homograph: a word that has more than one meaning but is always spelled
the same.

Ready to stimulate connections in your temporal lobe(s)? Enjoy! (Solutions are below. Please don’t
check them until you have tried to solve all the pairs!)

1. LOCK — PIANO

2. SHIP — CARD

3. TREE — CAR

4. SCHOOL — EYE

https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2014/06/20/brain-teaser-to-exercise-your-cognitive-skills-where-do-words-go/ 1/5