NIOSH to Study Cog­ni­tive Loads on Under­ground Coal Min­ers (Occu­pa­tional Health & Safety):

“NIOSH has pub­lished a notice out­lin­ing an inter­est­ing study it plans to under­take to under­stand the cog­ni­tive demands placed on under­ground coal min­ers by new safety devices they must carry, with the indus­try increas­ingly deploy­ing wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, per­sonal dust mon­i­tors, and prox­im­ity detectors…

The phys­i­cal bur­den is evi­dent, but the cog­ni­tive effect may not be as clear,” Read the rest of this entry »

“Brain Train­ing” May Lessen Cog­ni­tive Impair­ments Asso­ci­ated with Coro­nary Bypass Surgery (press release):

“This study demon­strated that patients suf­fer­ing from cog­ni­tive deficits after coro­nary bypass surgery could greatly ben­e­fit from cog­ni­tive train­ing that tar­gets both atten­tion and memory—the cog­ni­tive func­tions most affected after this type of operation…What’s more, ben­e­fits from the train­ing are main­tained over time…the devel­op­ment of cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion tools would be highly ben­e­fi­cial for patients who undergo coro­nary bypass surgery as a way to speed up their recov­ery and improve their qual­ity of life.”

To Learn More:

• Car­diac Surgery Can Impact Long-term Cog­ni­tive Functioning
• Does cog­ni­tive train­ing work? (For Whom? For What?)

MRI work­ers expe­ri­ence tran­sient neu­rocog­ni­tive effects (News Medical):

“Indi­vid­u­als work­ing in the vicin­ity of mag­netic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) machines may expe­ri­ence tran­sient neu­rocog­ni­tive effects when mov­ing their heads, research demonstrates…Study par­tic­i­pants who com­pleted stan­dard­ized Read the rest of this entry »

As school is about to resume, peo­ple are reminded of their strong opin­ions about how to fix schools: more fund­ing, bet­ter teach­ers, less gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence, more gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence, etc. But the one obvi­ous, and never-stated prob­lem, is that stu­dents don’t remem­ber what they are taught. In spite of all the “teach­ing to the test” that par­ents and teach­ers com­plain about, stu­dents still don’t remem­ber the very things they were taught as answers to test questions.

The rea­son they don’t remem­ber is that they are not taught how to mem­o­rize. Why is that? Read the rest of this entry »

The CEO of Mar­bles: The Brain Store will pro­vide an overview of What Brain Games Con­sumers Buy (in Mar­bles’ stores) and Why, at the upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (June 7-14th, 2012).

Lind­say started Mar­bles: The Brain Store in 2008 with the sim­ple idea of find­ing the best brain games out there and Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I had the good for­tune of spend­ing four days in Nuevo Val­larta, Mex­ico, with over 300 amaz­ing indi­vid­u­als from 40+ coun­tries who had been named Young Global Lead­ers by the World Eco­nomic Forum. The sum­mit agenda was insight­ful and inspir­ing, con­ver­sa­tions with other par­tic­i­pants always proved to be eye-opening and stim­u­lat­ing, and the over­all atmos­phere was con­struc­tive. You can read more about some of those con­ver­sa­tions here.

What I’d like to high­light in this arti­cle is the remark­able (and optional) activ­ity that started off every day at 7 in the morn­ing. Called “Pro­tect Your Asset” Read the rest of this entry »

Google chang­ing how humans think (Cana­dian Business):

- “…the psy­chol­o­gists con­cluded that our reliance on the Inter­net has affected how we relate to information—instead of remem­ber­ing the infor­ma­tion itself, we just remem­ber where to find it.”

- “While the move from know­ing infor­ma­tion to know­ing where to find it has many benefits—including free­ing up your brain for more rea­son­ing and ana­lyt­i­cal thinking—there’s a down­side too.” Read the rest of this entry »