Boot camp for your brain: The key to unlocking your creative potential? The final part of a top neurosurgeon’s book reveals how to breathe, dream and sleep to unleash your true brain power

We like to think of our most advanced abilities — such as our intelligence or our creativity — as things that define us; things we personally brought into being. Nobody says that a person ‘has’ creativity; we say that he or she ‘is’ creative. But let a tumour grow between the frontal lobes of the brain, the part essential for any creative work, and we quickly learn that those great gifts were simply on loan. The workings of the human brain are so complex that we’re only just beginning to uncover some of their millions of secrets. But one thing we have discovered since I first became a brain surgeon 15 years ago is that the brain has a remarkable capacity to heal itself — just as your physical body does. Your brain can make a remarkable comeback following a devastating injury or illness, as we saw in Saturday’s Daily Mail. Nobody says that a person ‘has’ creativity; we say that he or she ‘is’ creative. But let a tumour grow between the frontal lobes of the brain, the part essential for any creative work, and we quickly learn that those great gifts were simply on loan Nobody says that a person ‘has’ creativity; we say that he or she ‘is’ creative. But let a tumour grow between the frontal lobes of the brain, the part essential for any creative work, and we quickly learn that those great gifts were simply on loan And if patients who’ve suffered brain cancer, a stroke or injuries can relearn how to walk, talk and regain their fine motor skills using techniques they practise regularly, why should anyone doubt that healthy people can’t push their brain-power into a higher gear, too? For while most of your brain cells are formed in the womb, […]

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