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May 7, 2012 Comments Off

Why Agile Minds Deploy Both Rational and Intuitive Problem-Solving

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A rare aha moment in 2011 set me chas­ing new problem-solving research. The study Ratio­nal Ver­sus Intu­itive Problem-Solving: How Think­ing ‘Off the Beaten Path’ Can Stim­u­late Cre­ativ­ity pub­lished in Psy­chol­ogy of Aes­thet­ics, Cre­ativ­ity, and the Arts stung me out of a spot of intel­lec­tual arro­gance. From my per­spec­tive, John Dewey’s 19th cen­tury step-wise Read the rest of this entry »

Jul 1, 2008 Comments Off

Brain Fitness Update: Why We Need Walking Book Clubs

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Here you are have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please brainremem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

News

CNN: Aging boomers fuel ‘brain fit­ness’ explo­sion: An excel­lent arti­cle via Asso­ci­ated Press explor­ing why the brain fit­ness mar­ket passed a tip­ping point in 2007 and pre­dict­ing future trends build­ing on our mar­ket report.

Brain Age: Great Game, Wrong Con­cept: One rea­son why we believe the field will keep grow­ing is because we are see­ing more tools avail­able than ever before to assess and train a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive skills. The bad news (is this really news?) is that we shouldn’t be expect­ing magic pills and that “brain age” is a fic­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

Jun 20, 2008 5

Why Smart Brains Make Stupid Decisions

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It hap­pens. Often.

Why?

We just secured an inter­view with Ori Braf­man, co-author of Sway: The Irre­sistible Pull of Irra­tional Behav­ior (Dou­ble­day Busi­ness, 2008), to dis­cuss our Dark Side (well, he calls it “dif­fer­ent hid­den forces” and “psy­cho­log­i­cal undercurrents”).

While read­ing some reviews about his book, I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed find­ing, after the usual impres­sive long col­lec­tion of endorse­ments, this “disclaimer”:

*DISCLAIMER: If you decide to buy this book because of these endorse­ments, you just got swayed. One of the psy­cho­log­i­cal forces you’ll read about in Sway is our ten­dency to place a higher value on opin­ions from peo­ple in posi­tions of promi­nence, power, or author­ity. (But you should still buy the book.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Feb 18, 2008 8

Encephalon: Briefing the Next US President on Neuroscience & Psychology

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Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

We are glad to wel­come you to our blog car­ni­val. After a short hia­tus, Encephalon is backScience Debate 2008 and gath­er­ing steam. We have pre­pared this “revival” edi­tion just for you, so you can be well informed and impress us all dur­ing the upcom­ing Sci­encede­bate 2008.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the ques­tions posed by 24 blog­gers on neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy issues. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Big Ques­tions

Do I deserve to vote even if I don’t have Free Will? (Marc at Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cally Challenged).

If cul­ture sculpts our brains, what can our brains do to refine our cul­ture first? (Stephanie at Brains On Purpose).

Is God more than a fly­ing brain? (Jes­sica at bioephemera).

Is Your brain really read­ing This? (Pete at Brain Hammer).

A Few Intru­sive Questions

Do you play any musi­cal instru­ment? (Megan at SharpBrains).

Read the rest of this entry »

Apr 25, 2007 4

Brain Health and The way we age now

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The New Yorker April 30th issue includes a superb arti­cle on The Way We Age Now: Can med­i­cine serve an aging pop­u­la­tion?. Atul Gawande pro­vides a great (and a bit depress­ing) sur­vey on the geri­atrics field: more and more need for prac­ti­tion­ers, with less and less supply.

now, a cou­ple of quotes and data points that are very rel­e­vant to our efforts around healthy brain aging.

  • “for most of our hundred-thousand-year existence—all but the past cou­ple of hun­dred years—the aver­age life span of human beings has been thirty years or less. (Research sug­gests that sub­jects of the Roman Empire had an aver­age life expectancy of twenty-eight years.)”
  • “Inher­i­tance has sur­pris­ingly lit­tle influ­ence on longevity. James Vau­pel, of the Max Planck Insti­tute for Demo­graphic Research, in Ros­tock, Ger­many, notes that only six per cent of how long you’ll live, com­pared with the aver­age, is explained by your par­ents’ longevity; by con­trast, up to ninety per cent of how tall you are, com­pared with the aver­age, is explained by your par­ents’ height. Even genet­i­cally iden­ti­cal twins vary widely in life span: the typ­i­cal gap is more than fif­teen years.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing. First, let’s appre­ci­ate our incred­i­ble life expectancy today; we are lit­er­ally push­ing the envelop of how to main­tain healthy brains and bod­ies. By his­tor­i­cal stan­dards, many of us are liv­ing on “bor­rowed” time. Sec­ond, there you have some evi­dence for the impor­tance of our expe­ri­ence and our lifestyle on how long we live. In terms of healthy aging, on aver­age, nur­ture seems to be at least as impor­tant as nature, and the one more in our con­trol to take action today.

You can learn more on the Suc­cess­ful Aging of the Healthy Brain: a beau­ti­ful essay by Mar­ian Dia­mond on how to keep our brains and minds active and fit through­out our lives.

Related blog posts

Top Articles on Brain, Cognition and Neuroplasticity

  1. Do you believe these neu­romyths?, by SharpBrains
  2. Brain Plas­tic­ity: How learn­ing changes your brain, by Pas­cale Michelon
  3. In the Age of Google, Should Schools Teach Mem­o­riza­tion Skills?, by Bill Klemm
  4. Does cog­ni­tive train­ing work? (For Whom? For What?), by Pas­cale Michelon
  5. The Emo­tional Life of Your Brain, by by Richard David­son, Sharon Begley
  6. Cur­rent State of the Sci­ence behind Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD, by David Rabiner
  7. To Be (Your Con­nec­tome), or Not to Be (Your Genome), by Sebas­t­ian Seung
  8. Top 10 Brain Fit­ness Future Trends, by Alvaro Fernandez
  9. Biofeed­back now a “Level 1 — Best Sup­port” Inter­ven­tion for ADHD, by SharpBrains
  10. When 1 + 1 = 5: Dyscal­cu­lia and Work­ing Mem­ory, by Tracy Alloway
  11. Train­ing Atten­tion and Emo­tional Self-Regulation — Inter­view with Michael Pos­ner, by Alvaro Fernandez
  12. The Ten Habits of Highly Effec­tive Brains, by Alvaro Fernandez
  13. Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?, by Car­o­line Latham
  14. Brain fit­ness Q&A: Mem­ory, stress, emo­tions, by Alvaro Fernandez
  15. Cog­ni­tive ther­apy or med­ica­tion? Brain scans may help per­son­al­ize treat­ments, by SharpBrains
  16. New Study shows Teens with ADHD helped by Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­apy, by David Rabiner
  17. How Do Words Change Our Brains and Lives?, by Andrew New­berg, Mark Waldman
  18. BBC “Brain Train­ing” Exper­i­ment: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, by Alvaro Fernandez
  19. Sci­en­tific cri­tique of BBC/ Nature Brain Train­ing Exper­i­ment, by Liz Zelinski
  20. From Anti-Alzheimer’s “Magic Bul­lets” to True Brain Health, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Peter Whitehouse
  21. Why Agile Minds Deploy Both Ratio­nal and Intu­itive Problem-Solving, by Judith Tingley
  22. Why I Wrote The Woman Who Changed Her Brain, by Bar­bara Arrowsmith-Young
  23. The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom, by Alvaro Fernandez
  24. Break­ing Down the Cog­ni­tion & Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Alpha­bet Soup, by Dharma Singh Khalsa
  25. Top 10 Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, by Alvaro Fernandez
  26. To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, Start with Enthu­si­asm, by Helena Popovic
  27. Q&A with Yaakov Stern on Brain Reserve, Exer­cise, Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, Angry Birds, by Alvaro Fernandez
  28. It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Main­te­nance: Brain Care 101, by Alvaro Fernandez
  29. Eval­u­a­tion Check­list for Brain Fit­ness prod­ucts and games, by Alvaro Fernandez
  30. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion in Schools for Stress Man­age­ment, by Jill Sutie
  31. Stress and Neural Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity Puz­zle, by Gre­gory Kellet
  32. Cog­ni­tive and Emo­tional Devel­op­ment Through Play, by David Elkind
  33. AARP’s Brain Fit­ness Best Books List, by SharpBrains
  34. Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Per­son, by Alvaro Fernandez
  35. Improve Mem­ory with Sleep, Prac­tice, and Test­ing, by Bill Klemm
  36. 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn, by Lau­rie Bartels
  37. Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and Brain Fit­ness, by Alvaro Fernandez
  38. Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion for Adults & Teens with ADHD, by David Rabiner
  39. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise and Brain Health, by Pas­cale Michelon
  40. Sleep, Tetris, Mem­ory and the Brain, by Shan­non Moffet

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