Brain Exercise: your most recent Aha! moment?

braintop Ques­tion: what was your most recent Aha! moment? a recent insight? how did it happen?

Why should we spend a minute reflect­ing on it? In the post on The Neu­ro­science of Lead­er­ship and Brain Fit­ness, we quote David Rock and Jef­frey M. Schwartz and say that the Quan­tum Zeno Effect, applied to neu­ro­science, means that “the men­tal act of focus­ing atten­tion sta­bi­lizes the asso­ci­at­ed brain circuits…Over time, pay­ing enough atten­tion to any spe­cif­ic brain con­nec­tion keeps the rel­e­vant cir­cuit­ry open and dynam­i­cal­ly alive…The pow­er is in the focus.”

(I have post­ed answers to the pre­vi­ous exer­cis­es as Com­ments in the respec­tive posts. Enjoy!). Cred­it for pic: AccuWeather

4 Comments

  1. Senia on September 25, 2006 at 3:07

    Nice about your q to think about an AHA moment and to focus on that moment in order to keep that AHAness active. I like the idea that focus­ing is use­ful for keep­ing brain cir­cuit­ry active. Makes me think of the use­ful­ness of focus­ing on noth­ing, i.e. med­i­ta­tion, which must also acti­vate that circuitry.

    I met a girl this week­end who is a huge fan of that game, BrainAge!

    An AHA moment — when I real­ized two dif­fer­ent news sto­ries had at their core the same injus­tice that absolute­ly rubbed me the wrong way.



  2. Alvaro on September 25, 2006 at 10:29

    Hi Senia,
    I enjoyed the arti­cle for many rea­sons, but one of the major ones was that con­cept about the val­ue of reflec­tion to “solid­i­fy” Aha!s and keep learn­ing and learn­ing and learn­ing. This may be an Aha! itself.
    Yes, I have heard the BrainAge game is real­ly addic­tive. It is great that some­one is start­ing to pop­u­lar­ize the val­ue of brain exercise.

    Med­i­ta­tion helps with train­ing atten­tion, appre­ci­a­tion and oth­er behav­iors that we can become famil­iar through, I am sure, sus­tained focus.



  3. Christopher Panayis on November 26, 2006 at 4:18

    Didn’t get the AHA thing… Clear crys­tal­ized thought that only lasts a few sec­onds in my mind and then leaves makes me think of the “wow” feel­ing. You know these times; they make every­thing clear to you for no rea­son and then leave again. (e.g. “I feel con­fused tired and bored with what i am because i actu­al­ly love three things in life and not one”)



  4. Alvaro on November 26, 2006 at 4:35

    Well, they don’t ful­ly “leave”. They have lit­er­al­ly con­tributed to the growth of some den­drites, on which you can build next time you have a sim­i­lar feeling.



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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