Is the Inter­net Really Mak­ing Us Dumber? (Der Spiegel):

“In Ger­many, scores increase by about 3 IQ points each decade. In fact, the tests have to be adjusted every few years to keep up. The test cur­rently used for chil­dren is called the WISC-IV. A per­son claim­ing to have an IQ of 130 needs to spec­ify which test gen­er­ated that result: WISC-III? WISC-IV? The aston­ish­ing upward trend Read the rest of this entry »

Inter­est­ing trend mini-report pre­pared by Inter­Con­ti­nen­tal Hotels Group, quot­ing Sharp­Brains data. Trends that will influ­ence 2012 (IHG press release):

“BRAIN SPA: The desire to learn more will influ­ence des­ti­na­tion deci­sions. Brain Spa looks at our grow­ing appetite to expand and keep our intel­lect in good health – in fact we are pre­pared to travel for it. Forbes has tipped the mar­ket for goods and ser­vices that claim to enhance IQ as the next tril­lion dol­lar indus­try and Brain Fit­ness soft­ware is already worth $265 mil­lion in the US. The mar­ket for goods and ser­vices respond­ing to the new demand for men­tal stim­u­la­tion is expected to grow between $1 bil­lion to $5 bil­lion by 2015.”

To Learn More:

• Pro­tect Your Asset by Being Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach

Let us share below a list of 40 com­mon brain fit­ness, brain health, brain train­ing ques­tions that we will make sure to address dur­ing the upcom­ing online course, How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012 (starts March 7th). The ques­tions are sequenced by their approx­i­mate order of appear­ance in the syl­labus. We look for­ward to an engag­ing, inter­ac­tive and valu­able expe­ri­ence! ***Please remem­ber that course reg­is­tra­tion ends on Sun­day, March 4th.***

Top 40 Brain Fit­ness & Train­ing Questions

1. How can one define brain fitness
2. What is link between stress, focus and memory
3. Does “brain age” even exist
4. How to enhance over­all men­tal pro­duc­tiv­ity, vs just IQ
5. Is there some “ceil­ing” to my improve­ment or can I always try more things
6. How brain func­tions evolve with age. What improves, what declines, what should I be pay­ing atten­tion to Read the rest of this entry »

The MC at the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s reunion din­ner encour­aged audi­ence mem­bers to reveal the most sig­nif­i­cant take-away from their under­grad­u­ate nurs­ing edu­ca­tion. The great­est ben­e­fit was quickly clear to me — problem-solving think­ing. Mem­ory pro­duced a mind video: a short, dark-haired, nurs­ing instruc­tor lec­tur­ing a small group of first year stu­dents in an empty patient room. “Don’t mem­o­rize the steps of ster­ile tech­nique. Use a problem-solving think­ing process.” She described the sequen­tial, cycli­cal process: define the prob­lem, gather infor­ma­tion, develop a solu­tion strat­egy, allo­cate resources, mon­i­tor progress, and eval­u­ate the solu­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

Brain changes seen in cab­bies who take ‘The Knowl­edge (BBC Health):

“The struc­ture of a Lon­don taxi driver’s brain changes dur­ing the gru­el­ing process of learn­ing the quick­est way around the cap­i­tal, scans reveal. Dozens of trainee dri­vers had MRI scans before and after they acquired “The Knowl­edge”, mem­o­riz­ing hun­dreds of jour­neys and street names.

The Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don team, writ­ing in Cur­rent Biol­ogy, found brain parts linked to mem­ory grew big­ger. Read the rest of this entry »

NIH-funded study finds dyslexia not tied to IQ (NIH press release):

At left, brain areas active in typ­i­cally devel­op­ing read­ers engaged in a rhyming task. Shown at right is the brain area acti­vated in poor read­ers involved in the same task.

- “Regard­less of high or low over­all scores on an IQ test, chil­dren with dyslexia show sim­i­lar pat­terns of brain activ­ity, accord­ing to researchers sup­ported by the National Insti­tutes of Health. The results call into ques­tion the dis­crep­ancy model — the prac­tice of clas­si­fy­ing a child as dyslexic on the basis of a lag between read­ing abil­ity and over­all IQ scores.”

- “In many school sys­tems, the dis­crep­ancy model is the cri­te­rion for Read the rest of this entry »

How To Help Your Child’s Brain Grow Up Strong (NPR):

- “Kids who learn two lan­guages young are bet­ter able to learn abstract rules and to reverse rules that they’ve already learned,” says Aamodt. “They’re less likely to have dif­fi­culty choos­ing between con­flict­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties when there are two pos­si­ble responses that both present them­selves. They’re also bet­ter at fig­ur­ing out what other peo­ple are think­ing, which is prob­a­bly because they have to fig­ure out which lan­guage to use every time they talk to Read the rest of this entry »