First, some of my favorite blog car­ni­vals we con­tributed to this week: Grand Rounds, HR, Edu­ca­tion, Law, Car­ni­val of the Green.

2 very inter­est­ing news pieces (the sec­ond one, includ­ing fun brain teasers):

1) With a fresh grasp on — and label for — an aca­d­e­mic block, some slow achiev­ers are eager to return to school (Boston Globe)

Quote: “Turns out Ellie has a prob­lem with work­ing mem­ory, a term used to describe the abil­ity to retain infor­ma­tion from the top of a page to the bot­tom. Work­ing mem­ory comes under the umbrella of exec­u­tive func­tion, a think­ing skill that refers to the tasks exec­u­tives tend to excel at, such as pri­or­i­tiz­ing, orga­niz­ing, and men­tally shift­ing infor­ma­tion around. It’s a skill that devel­ops pro­gres­sively, start­ing in the ele­men­tary years and con­tin­u­ing into adulthood…If you’ve never heard of exec­u­tive func­tion, brace your­self. It’s burst­ing onto the edu­ca­tional scene.”

Com­ment: Great arti­cle. We cov­ered this in detail in an essay last year: Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and ADD/ADHD Today.

2) Want a job at Google? Try these brain­teasers first (CNN)

Quote: “Seem­ingly ran­dom ques­tions like these have become com­mon­place in Sil­i­con Val­ley and other tech out­posts, where com­pa­nies aren’t as inter­ested in the cor­rect answer to a tough ques­tion as they are in how a prospec­tive employee might try to solve it. Since busi­nesses today have to be able to react quickly to shift­ing mar­ket dynam­ics, they want more than engi­neers with high IQs and good col­lege tran­scripts. They want peo­ple who can think on their feet.”

Com­ment: What are those com­pa­nies (Google, Microsoft, Ama­zon) after? Employ­ees with good Exec­u­tive Func­tions. You can try some of the fun teasers in the arti­cle. For more con­text on what those are, here are some quotes from my Inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg:

AF: Please tell us more about what the Frontal Lobes are

EG: We researchers typ­i­cally call them the Exec­u­tive Brain. The pre­frontal cor­tex is young by evo­lu­tion­ary terms, and is the brain area crit­i­cal to adapt to new sit­u­a­tions, plan for the future, and self-regulate our actions in order to achieve long-term objec­tives. We could say that that part of the brain, right behind our fore­head, acts as the con­duc­tor of an orches­tra, direct­ing and inte­grat­ing the work of other parts of the brain.

I pro­vide a good exam­ple in The Exec­u­tive Brain book, where I explain how I was able to orga­nize my escape from Rus­sia into the US.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, the path­ways that con­nect the frontal lobes with the rest of the brain are slow to mature, reach­ing full oper­a­tional state between ages 18 and 30, or maybe even later. And, given that they are not as hard-wired as other parts of the brain, they are typ­i­cally the first areas to decline.

And 3 quick announce­ments on SharpBrains

1) We have been ranked #25 in the World’s Top Blogs in Health and Med­i­cine. What is a bit sur­pris­ing is that the blog just one posi­tion ahead of us is no more no less…The Wall Street Journal’s Health blog. WSJ, are you ready for us ?

2) I will be lead­ing a work­shop on Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­nity at the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence. Wednes­day, Octo­ber 10 09:00 AM-12:00 PM.
Descrip­tion: “Accord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal, a new wave in brain health pro­grams for older adults is mov­ing through the coun­try. What are you pro­vid­ing in your site? This ses­sion will give you a sam­pling of a model brain health series that you can con­duct in your site. The ses­sion will intro­duce you to the sci­ence of brain fit­ness, includ­ing many engag­ing brain exer­cises to do indi­vid­u­ally or in a group. Exer­cise Your Brain: New Brain Research and Impli­ca­tions has been taught at sev­eral dif­fer­ent Bay Area loca­tions includ­ing the Osher Life­long Learn­ing Institutes.”

3) As you will have noticed, we have started to exper­i­ment adding some ads to the blog. Please give us your feedback!

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