On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not

By Dr. Ginger Campbell | August 18, 2008 |

Where does our “Feel­ing of Know­ing” come from? Have you ever felt cer­tain that you knew an answer even though you could­n’t think of it right off? Where does that “feel­ing of know­ing” come from? The answer to this ques­tion is the focus of neu­rol­o­gist Robert Bur­ton’s new book On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are…

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Mind Hacks and the Placebo Effect

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 7, 2008

In the ETech pan­el a few days ago, we dis­cussed some futur­is­tic and some emerg­ing ways in which we can “hack our minds”, most­ly from a tech­nol­o­gy point of view. Nei­ther myself nor the oth­er pan­elists thought of sug­gest­ing the most obvi­ous and inex­pen­sive method, proven in thou­sands of research stud­ies. The secret com­pound?: Belief. Also…

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Brain Teaser for the Frontal Lobes: Tipping the Scales

By Caroline Latham | June 15, 2007 |

Wes Car­roll found this one in the Men­sa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Genius­es by Harold Gale.Tipping the Scales.Question:The top two scales are in per­fect balance.How many dia­monds will be need­ed to bal­ance the bot­tom set?This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic.Click here to get the Answer.

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