from "The Future of the Mind"

According to the selection, which of the following is the most important reason scientists were motivated to study Einstein's brain?

• They wanted to find out whether Einstein's brain showed signs of disease or decay.
• They wanted to learn how to develop children's brains to make them more intelligent.
• They wanted to learn how to develop their own brains to make themselves into geniuses.
• They wanted to find out whether Einstein's brain showed differences that might explain his genius.

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According to the selection, what was the most significant discovery the scientists made about Einstein's brain?

• His brain was quite normal.
• His brain was larger than average.
• His brain had features never seen before.
• His brain had more neurons than were expected.

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Which of the statements below was not the reason that Einstein was so successful as a scientist?

• He was the most intelligent scientist of his time.
• He had the courage to challenge scientific ideas that he felt were wrong.
• He used his imagination to create and test ideas through his "thought pictures."
• He had the mental focus to spend ten years developing each of his most important theories.

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According to the selection, how does scientific evidence support the idea that "practice makes perfect"?

• Practicing tasks adds new cells to a person's brain.
• Practicing a skill for ten thousand hours will make anyone a world-class expert.
• Practicing new skills throughout one's life is necessary to prevent the brain from shrinking in size.
• Practicing a task makes it easier because repetition strengthens the connections between neurons in the brain.

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As it is used in the sentence below, what is the most likely meaning of abnormally?
One might expect that Einstein's brain was far beyond an ordinary human's, that it must have been huge, perhaps with areas that were abnormally large.

• different from the average
• showing signs of disease
• average or ordinary
• one of a kind

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If an event goes on indefinitely, which of the following must be true?

• The event has a clear beginning and ending.
• The event is impossible to understand.
• The event is difficult to observe.
• The event has no known ending.

As it is used in this excerpt, which of the following is the most precise meaning of arduous?
"Scientists in 2011 analyzed the brains of London's famous taxicab drivers, who have to memorize 25,000 streets in the dizzying maze that makes up modern London.  It takes three to four years to prepare for this arduous test ..."

• unfair
• sickening
• requiring great effort
• requiring backbreaking labor

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Which of the following statements best conveys the scientific evidence about intelligence presented in the selection.

• A person's intelligence does not change after early adulthood.
• Most people who are considered geniuses look and act differently from the average person.
• A person's intelligence is more crucial to his or her success than any quality of personality.
• Most people who are considered geniuses use intelligence, imagination, and hard work to achieve their goals.

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In the selection, the author calls Einstein "the right man for the times."  Which statement from the text most clearly explains this view of Einstein?

• He was a bohemian, so it was natural for him to rebel against the establishment in physics.
• He was a theoretical physicist, not an experimental one, so he was continually running sophisticated simulations of the future in his head.
• In 1905, the old physical world of Newton was crumbling in light of experiments that clearly suggested a new physics was about to be born, waiting for a genius to show the way.
• If somehow it becomes possible to clone Einstein from the cells in his preserved brain, I suspect that the clone would not be the next Einstein.

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