Improve Your Memory (Level 1 of 3): August 2011

There are 10 languages with more than 100 million native speakers. There is a random image chosen for each language in this post. You should memorize these languages and their corresponding images for following this exercise:

The official languages of the United Nations are the six languages that are used in UN meetings, and in which all official UN documents are written.

One of these six languages is French.

The other five languages are included in the above list of "languages with more than 100 million native speakers".

In the following image list you can see the images corresponding to those five languages:

Now answer the following questions:

1. What are the six official languages of the United Nations?

2. What are the ten languages with more than 100 million native speakers?

3. Which languages with more than 100 million native speakers are not official languages of the United Nations?

- Scroll down to see the answers!

Answers:

1. What are the six official languages of the United Nations?

Arabic
English
French
Mandarin
Russian
Spanish

Note: As mentioned in Improve Your General Knowledge in Leisure Time!, in order to memorize the above list, use FRAMES as a peg:

French, Russian, Arabic, Mandarin, English, Spanish

2. What are the ten languages with more than 100 million native speakers?

Arabic
Bengali
English
Hindi
Japanese
Mandarin
Portuguese
Punjabi
Russian
Spanish

3. Which languages with more than 100 million native speakers are not official languages of the United Nations?

Bengali
Hindi
Japanese
Portuguese
Punjabi

You have already accomplished Image Remembering - Type 1 - No. 1. This post provides the same type of memory exercise; however with images that are a little hard to memorize.

Review the following images for 3 minutes, and keep in mind how many times each has been illustrated:

Now, read the following article to spend some time before getting back to the above exercise:

8 Health Benefits of Laughter
by Melissa Breyer
Aug 23, 2011
[source: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/8-health-benefits-of-laughter.html]

Is there anything better than a contagious giggle that you absolutely can’t control? (Ok, maybe not so good in school or church.) Laughter works wonderfully well in the moment, but it also has some surprising long-term health benefits. In the book A Better Brain at Any Age: The Holistic Way to Improve Your Memory, Reduce Stress, and Sharpen Your Wits (Conari Press, 2009), author Sondra Kornblatt explores how laughter can truly make you feel better.

She writes that the new field of gelotology is exploring the benefits of laughter. It was brought to the public’s awareness in Norman Cousins’ memoir Anatomy of an Illness. Cousins found that comedies, like those of the Marx Brothers, helped him feel better and get some pain-free sleep. That’s because laughter helps the pituitary gland release its own pain-suppressing opiates.

What can laughter do?:

Lower blood pressure
Increase vascular blood flow and oxygenation of the blood
Give a workout to the diaphragm and abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg, and back muscles
Reduce certain stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline
Increase the response of tumor- and disease-killing cells such as Gamma-interferon and T-cells
Defend against respiratory infections–even reducing the frequency of colds–by immunoglobulon in saliva.
Increase memory and learning; in a study at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, humor during instruction led to increased test scores
Improve alertness, creativity, and memory
Humor and creativity work in similar ways, says humor guru William Fry, M.D., of Stanford University–by creating relationships between two disconnected items, you engage the whole brain.

Humor works quickly. Less than a half-second after exposure to something funny, and electrical wave moves through the higher brain functions of the cerebral cortex. The left hemisphere analyzes the words and structures of the joke; the right hemisphere “gets” the joke; the visual sensory area of the occipital lobe creates images; the limbic (emotional) system makes you happier; and the motor sections make you smile or laugh.

So let’s laugh. What makes you laugh? Tell us your favorite funny movie, or how about a good joke?

OK, now answer the following questions! Do not refer to the above list of images, just use your memory!

1) For how many times this image appeared in the above image list?