Novelty needed to fire-up employees' brains: Murali Doraiswamy

MindRush 2014, the annual business conclave conducted by Business Today saw some of the best minds talking about different aspects of business, management and leadership qualities. P Murali Doraiswamy, Professor & Director, Mental Fitness Lab at Duke University, was one of them, who spoke in the session Ignition Lab II and discussed how to'Spark your Grey Cells to do more for you!'.

Doraiswamy says we can improve our IQ through practice, "by playing chess or sudoku, for instance". Explaining the brain's functioning, he says most of the brain's cognitive abilities drop by 25 per cent if we don't sleep one night.

Doraiswamy says it takes six to eight weeks to see any visible change in performance. Visualisation helps in doing a task as the brain rehearses that task before you actually do it, points out Doraiswamy. Novelty is also important to fire-up employees' brains.

He stresses on the importance of a free, calm brain, saying that free time is very important for the brain and suggesting that companies should give scheduled time to employees to think.