Feb 9, 2007
Brain Workout for Your Frontal Lobes
By: Caroline Latham
Your frontal lobes are home to your executive functions, including pattern recognition. Here’s a puzzle to challenge your ability to uncover a pattern.
In this puzzle, three numbers: 16, 14, and 38, need to be assigned to one of the rows of numbers below. To which row should each number be assigned — A, B, or C?
| A: | 0 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B: | 5 | 13 | 2 | 10 | 16 |
| C: | 7 | 1 | 47 | 11 | 17 |
Why do we care about pattern recognition skills? Well, if you’re an athlete, then you want to constantly improve your ability to see spatial patterns on the court or field quickly so you can act on them — by passing to open space or attacking the goal at the right moment. Stock traders look for patterns in the market behavior to guide them on buying and selling decisions. Chess masters are experts at recognizing complicated moves. Reading is also pattern recognition.
So, you use pattern recognition all the time whether you know it or not. But remember, using a skill is great, but you have to keep exercising it a little bit harder each time to develop it further.
Have you solved the puzzle yet? If not, here’s a hint:
It’s not a mathematical problem. The numerical values are irrelevant.
Keep reading for the answer…
The answer is that the numbers are organized by shape! Look at Row A — they are all rounded shapes. Row C is all linear shapes. And Row B is a mix of curves and lines. Therefore, 16 goes to B, 14 goes to C, and 38 goes to A.
[…] Regardless of your beliefs about “brain gyms”, the blog is certainly worth keeping an eye on as Sharpbrains track the evidence for “science-based brain fitness”. They are also likely to offer the occasional mental challenge as evidenced by their recent post. My main hope is that they are able to keep the blog even-sided and provide a balanced account of the evidence.  […]
[…] Brain Workout for Your Frontal Lobes […]
[…] Gilbert says the reason that “the human being is the only animal that thinks about the future” is that we have a well-developed frontal lobe. Alvaro and Caroline write wonderful entries about the interesting aspects of the frontal lobe all the time at SharpBrains (see here, here, and here). Gilbert says, “The frontal lobe — the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age — is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.” […]
yea…I did this problem in 7 seconds yet my IQ is 135. I guess that means …I have a good frontal lobe?
I am generaly creative and can think of many possibilities to an answer…that is why I usually do badly on multiple choice because I see patterns that are .…possible, but not the ‘correct’ ones.
the frontal lobe if it doesn’t correlate with IQ must not have much relevence in today’s society? no, that would be wrong correct?
hello jjj,
1) It is great that you see creative options (divergent thinking). You just need to complement that with convergent thinking to analyze alternatives and select the most likely one.
2) IQ is a critical component of intelligence if you want to be an engineer or similar quantitative jobs. The frontal lobes allow you to understand your environment, adapt, set goals, plan, execute your plans…so they are critical for everything.
[…] 18. Don’t be misled by this brain workout. […]
38 — a
16 — b
14 — c
I got the correct answers, but for entirely different reasons than stated above in the ‘answer’.
I assigned the numbers (38,16,14) to letter rows already containing both digits of the numbers needing to be assigned.
Did everyone else notice that?
for some reason i just could not look at the numerical figures and assign similarities to them besides qualitative observations… which left me very confused. i guess being a math major was working against me
@julie .…
yes even i noticed the same thing…but somehow that pattern didnt felt that convincing