Wel­come to the Feb­ru­ary 19, 2007 edi­tion of brain fitness.

Today we want to high­light an excel­lent Inter­view with Aaron Beck on the His­tory of Cog­ni­tive Ther­apy sub­mit­ted by the Beck Insti­tute. Dr. Beck was 83 when he gave this inter­view. To the ques­tion “Do you have a view about age­ing?”, he responds “I can only speak for myself. I know that prac­ti­cally all my col­leagues from med­ical school days who are still around have retired. That is not some­thing that I think about. It is no more on my hori­zon now than it was when we first met a quar­ter of a cen­tury ago. I keep look­ing ahead.” He also says “I have always liked to unify dif­fer­ent fields. Given my back­ground in neu­rol­ogy I do not see a con­flict between neu­rol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy. But if you look at the train­ing of con­tem­po­rary psy­chi­a­trists, for exam­ple, the two domains are totally dis­tinct. If psy­chi­a­try is to sur­vive as a dis­ci­pline, a merg­ing of the con­cepts of neu­rol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy will need to occur.”

Sci­ence and Philosophy

D.A.N. presents a great new arti­cle in its series Look at the Human Mind Part2: Per­cep­tion.

Neu­rophiloso­pher explores Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis in the adult human brain. “One of the cen­tral dog­mas of neu­ro­science was that the brains of adult mam­mals can­not gen­er­ate new nerve cells. But about 10 years ago, this changed, when … “. “Now, an advance online pub­li­ca­tion on the web­site of the jour­nal Sci­ence pro­vides evi­dence that neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis may also occur in the olfac­tory bulb of the human brain.”

GrrlSci­en­tist makes the point that maybe the start­ing point in Brain Fit­ness is to get rid of the bad stuff-check out What’s Your Poi­son?.

Bora explores whether our social envi­ron­ment or our phys­i­cal one may be influ­enc­ing us more, by dis­cussing an exper­i­ment on their respec­tive effects on our bio­log­i­cal clock, at Sun Time is the Real Time.

Dr. Jane Chin presents Love Does Not Come From the Heart and says that “Free­dom is achieved when we become con­scious of all that com­pels and impels us. In order to under­stand how we become con­scious, we need to under­stand the unit process of becom­ing con­scious.” Jane is clearly exer­cis­ing her mind by explor­ing Rudolf Steiner’s The Phi­los­o­phy of Free­dom.

Turil Cron­burg presents The Wise Turtle’s Guide to Human Needs say­ing, “A beau­ti­ful and cre­ative expres­sion of Maslow’s Hier­ar­chy of Needs as seen from a philo­soph­i­cal health perspective.”

Alvaro inter­views a Notre Dame researcher to dis­cuss ADD/ADHD and work­ing mem­ory train­ing.

Car­o­line sum­ma­rizes the research behind Cog­ni­tive Reserve and Lifestyle that indi­cates how impor­tant men­tal stim­u­la­tion is for healthy brain aging.

Edu­ca­tion and Pro­fes­sional Development

Stephanie West Allen explores the poten­tial value of fMRI to be able to answer the ques­tion Do clients tell the truth when sur­veyed about sat­is­fac­tion? The brain knows and it might be telling.

Michelle B helps us iden­tify obsta­cles to peak per­for­mance and learn how to man­age them, in Tam­ing of the Trader’s Gremlin(s).

Brett Steen­barger reviews research on heart rate vari­abil­ity in Enhanc­ing the Trader’s Self-Control, show­ing a quan­ti­ta­tive way to tame that gremlin.

Dr. Beck would prob­a­bly agree that imple­ment­ing Michelle and Brett’s sug­ges­tions require con­scious and repeated prac­tice. Senia writes a great arti­cle, Cre­ate New Habits: Self-Regulation, with both great con­text and spe­cific recommendations.

Kare Ander­son presents a great blog dis­cussing Paul Ekman’s work in teach­ing you to rec­og­nize gen­uine or feigned facial express­sions in Won­der What He’s Really Feel­ing?. Devel­op­ing that skill can help you improve both pro­fes­sional and per­sonal rela­tion­ships, and maybe even spot a terrorist.

Health and Wellness

The Pos­i­tiv­ity Blog presents Take the Pos­i­tiv­ity Chal­lenge!, with very spe­cific train­ing sug­ges­tions to adopt a more pos­i­tive (but not delu­sional) atti­tude to life. The arti­cle starts with a great quote by Anais Nin: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Scott Lee dis­cusses the role of genet­ics, the envi­ron­ment, and our con­scious­ness in cre­at­ing who we are, with Evo­lu­tion & Inner Aware­ness.

Craig Harper presents The Incred­i­ble Rela­tion­ship between our Mind and our Body. say­ing, “We are a col­lec­tive of peo­ple who are (typ­i­cally) stressed on a reg­u­lar basis. We make our­selves sick.”

Vahid Chay­chi pro­vides advice to care­givers in At the Receiv­ing End of an Anx­i­ety Dis­or­der.

Per­sonal sto­ries and techniques

Alvin Soon explains How To Give A Good Com­pli­ment and how he has trained him­self to “open up con­ver­sa­tions, give peo­ple a lift, and raise my self-esteem at the same time”.

Bar­bra Sundquist helps us under­stand why “the things that make us angry are very reveal­ing” Who Pushes Your But­tons?. And pro­poses a tech­nique to “neu­tral­ize anger”.

Ray­mond David Salas on How to Have Beginner’s Luck.

Joanne presents her views about The Mind, Grace and Ananda­gir­iji.

Shamelle shares part of her jour­ney and three brief med­i­ta­tions in Relax and Unwind-Without Spend­ing Any Money!.

We hope you have enjoyed this edi­tion. Please help us spread the word by link­ing to this post. Sub­mit your blog arti­cle to the next edi­tion of brain fit­ness using our car­ni­val sub­mis­sion form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog car­ni­val index page.

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