Cognitive Neuroscience: the ultimate weapon for TV quiz shows

Fun arti­cle by Seed Mag­a­zine, WHO WANTS TO BE A COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENTIST MILLIONAIRE? (Thanks, Stephanie!).

A cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science post­grad at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty relates his expe­ri­ence in Who Wants to Be A Mil­lion­aire? through the lens­es of brain science.

Enjoy the article!-here you have some teasers:

“To pre­pare, I focused first on mem­o­ry tech­niques, the sub­ject of my doc­tor­al dissertation.”

If we can recall any frag­ment of a pat­tern, our brains tend to auto­mat­i­cal­ly fill in the rest.”

Anoth­er cog­ni­tive process essen­tial for win­ning on Mil­lion­aire is intu­ition, or more pre­cise­ly, know­ing how to make deci­sions based on intu­ition”… “Cog­ni­tive mod­els devel­oped by my advi­sor Gail Car­pen­ter sug­gest that a more effec­tive way to eval­u­ate an intu­ition is to con­sid­er its mnemon­ic asso­ci­a­tions.”

One aspect of Who Wants to Be a Mil­lion­aire? that I com­plete­ly failed to pre­pare for was my inter­ac­tion with Mered­ith. I nev­er even con­sid­ered the inevitable repar­tee between host and con­tes­tant. Our depart­ment does not put much empha­sis on social cog­ni­tion and social psy­chol­o­gy—and besides, was­n’t get­ting the ques­tions right all that mattered?”

The Benev­o­lent Mered­ith is the only enti­ty in the Mil­lion­aire stu­dio that the pro­duc­ers did not con­scious­ly set up to pro­voke con­tes­tant anx­i­ety.”

My neu­ro­hor­mones whipped from black mis­ery to shin­ing ebul­lience, sat­u­rat­ing my brain in a boil­ing caul­dron of epi­neph­rine and endor­phins.”

Did he win? well, you’ll have to read the arti­cle to know…

Alvaro

About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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