2008-Primaries

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 more…] about Encephalon: Brief­ing the Next US Pres­i­dent on Neu­ro­science & Psychology

Grand Rounds: Briefing the Next US President

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Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

Thank you for vis­it­ing Grand Rounds, the week­ly col­lec­tion of the best health and med­ical blog posts, in the midst of your very busy schedule.

Street Musicians in NYCThe health and med­ical blo­gos­phere would like to make sure you and your team take into account the issues out­lined below as you and your aids for­mu­late your poli­cies and put togeth­er the team that will fur­ther define and imple­ment them.

With­out fur­ther ado, let me out­line these 40 ques­tions and topics.

Dear Mr or Mrs Next US Pres­i­dent, [Read more…] about Grand Rounds: Brief­ing the Next US President

10 Brain Fitness New Year’s Resolutions

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Brain Fitness New Year's ResolutionsYou have sur­vived the 2007 shop­ping and eat­ing sea­son. Con­grat­u­la­tions! Now it’s time to shift gears and focus on 2008…whether you write down some New Year res­o­lu­tions or con­tem­plate some things that you want to let go of from last year and set inten­tions and goals for this year — as is a friend’s tra­di­tion on the win­ter solstice.

To sum­ma­rize the key find­ings of the last 20 years of neu­ro­science research on how to “exer­cise our brains”, there are three things that we can strive for: nov­el­ty, vari­ety and chal­lenge. If we do these three things, we will build new con­nec­tions in our brains, be mind­ful and pay atten­tion to our envi­ron­ment, improve cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties such as pat­tern-recog­ni­tion, and in gen­er­al con­tribute to our life­long brain health.

With these three prin­ci­ples of brain health in mind — nov­el­ty, vari­ety and chal­lenge — let me sug­gest a few poten­tial New Years res­o­lu­tions, per­haps some unex­pect­ed, that will help you make 2008 a year of Brain Fit­ness: [Read more…] about 10 Brain Fit­ness New Year’s Resolutions