Dr. Ginger Campbell

Michael Merzenich: Brain Plasticity offers Hope for Everyone

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“What­ev­er you strug­gle with in a sense as it stems from your neu­rol­o­gy, the inher­ent plas­tic­i­ty of the brain gives you a basis for improve­ment. This is a way under­uti­lized and under-appre­ci­at­ed resource that well all have.” Dr. Michael Merzenich on the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast #54, 2/13/09.

Recent­ly there has been grow­ing con­tro­ver­sy about the effec­tive­ness of com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams. As a co-founder of Posit Sci­ence, Inc. Dr. Michael Merzenich is a staunch defend­er of the meth­ods his com­pa­ny uses to val­i­date the pro­grams that they have devel­oped. But for the pur­pos­es of this essay, I want to share some of the key ideas we dis­cussed dur­ing his recent inter­view on the Brain Sci­ence Podcast.

First of all, I asked him to dis­cuss some of the high­lights of his long career. Since he was one of the first neu­ro­sci­en­tists to embrace the con­cepts of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty I was curi­ous about how this came about. While he did have some expo­sure to the ani­mal evi­dence as a grad­u­ate stu­dent, it was actu­al­ly his expe­ri­ence with the inven­tion of the cochlear implant that con­vinced Dr. Merzenich of the real-world, prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions of brain plas­tic­i­ty. The qual­i­ty of the [Read more…] about Michael Merzenich: Brain Plas­tic­i­ty offers Hope for Everyone

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

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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 Right Even When You’re Not.

I recent­ly reviewed Dr. Bur­ton’s book on the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast and last week I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­view him for the show. He explained that one of the ori­gins for his book was his expe­ri­ence with patients with con­di­tions like Cotard’s syn­drome (where the patient thinks he is dead or does not exist). What Dr. Bur­ton calls the “feel­ing of know­ing” is so strong that peo­ple con­sis­tent­ly trust it even when their beliefs con­tra­dict the evi­dence. At first it might seem sur­pris­ing that this feel­ing is gen­er­at­ed at an uncon­scious lev­el in our brain, yet the same sort of pro­cess­ing cre­ates the world we see and hear. It is well-known that what we see is not what enters our eyes, but [Read more…] about On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not

Brain Science: “Brain Rules” Podcast

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We are fans of the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast series host­ed by Gin­ger Camp­bell, so are pleased to announce that Dr. Camp­bell will start offer­ing to Sharp­Brains read­ers, peri­od­i­cal­ly, the high­lights of her most inter­est­ing pod­casts. Below, her first post. Enjoy!

- Alvaro

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In a recent inter­view on the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast, Dr. John Med­i­na, author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School shared some of the prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions of recent neu­ro­science research.

We talked about the impor­tance of exer­cise and sleep and we dis­cussed why appre­ci­at­ing how our mem­o­ry and atten­tion sys­tems real­ly work could change how we run schools, busi­ness­es, and even our dai­ly lives.

For exam­ple, [Read more…] about Brain Sci­ence: “Brain Rules” Podcast