After several intense weeks of studying financial accounting, business statistics, and economic analysis, MBA students encountered a refreshing and stimulating change of pace waiting for them when they attended Professor Tullar’s Whole Brain Workout. Designed to engage the entire brain, Dr. Tullar’s Whole Brain Workout resembles a standardized test on steroids. Beyond the familiar analogy completions and logical reasoning questions, the Whole Brain Workout includes sections on art history, word puzzles, cooking recipes, sensory perception, and Japanese poetry, with each section designed to exercise a different part of the brain. Dr. Tullar based his Whole Brain Workout on neurological research that illustrates how we use different parts of our brains to solve different types of problems.

In one section, students are given three minutes to memorize as many words from a language that Dr. Tullar invented called Venu. The students then have to complete a Venu vocabulary test. Each section of the Workout is timed and to bring out the students’ competitive spirit, Tullar divides them into teams and uses a scoring system to crown a winner at the completion of the workshop. Students with backgrounds in the liberal arts particularly enjoyed taking an MBA exam that involved writing poetry, analyzing art, and contemplating passages taken from the writings of great philosophers.

“We are providing our students with a skill set in the MBA program, but we are also teaching them to analyze problems from different perspectives and to solve problems creatively,” says Dr. Tullar who plans to hold a second Whole Brain Workout later in the semester and ultimately plans on expanding his Workout into a weekly series of mental exercises.

-September 2006