Affective-Neuroscience

News: Neuroscience Applied to Learning, Mental Health, Healthy Aging

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Here you have a round-up of recent news on how cog­ni­tive and affec­tive neu­ro­science find­ings are start­ing to inform edu­ca­tion and health across the lifespan:

Pedi­a­tri­cians issue a call to aid chil­dren fac­ing ‘tox­ic stress’ (LA Times)

Teach­ers as Brain-Chang­ers: Neu­ro­science and Learn­ing (EdWeek) [Read more…] about News: Neu­ro­science Applied to Learn­ing, Men­tal Health, Healthy Aging

New Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fitness Coach in 2012

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We are pleased to announce a new online course designed to equip par­tic­i­pants with the under­stand­ing and infor­ma­tion required to apply emerg­ing sci­ence and tools to enhance brain health and func­tion­al­ity across the lifespan.

Course descrip­tion: Infor­ma­tion over­load and longer lives expose our brains to more demands than even before. This fast-paced and inter­ac­tive online course will exam­ine the emerg­ing sci­ence of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and cog­ni­tive reserve and sur­vey lat­est tools and best prac­tices to equip you to become your own ‘brain fit­ness coach’ and address per­sonal and pro­fes­sional pri­or­i­ties. Avail­able online from any­where with an Inter­net con­nec­tion, this course will help you pin­point ways to opti­mize brain health and func­tion­al­ity and delay decline, nav­i­gat­ing the maze of frag­mented research, super­fi­cial media cov­er­age and exag­ger­ated mar­ket­ing claims. The course is based on The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness –recent­ly named a Best Book by AARP– and Sharp­Brains’ new ABBC frame­work (Address Basics, Build Capac­i­ties), and includes week­ly read­ings and activities.

Mechan­ics: The course con­sists of four two-hour-long live online ses­sions to be held in March 2012 (detailed syl­labus avail­able), and an online pri­vate forum for Fac­ulty and Par­tic­i­pants to inter­act dur­ing March and April 2012.

Who this is for: This course is for any­one who wants to under­stand how emerg­ing cog­ni­tive and affec­tive neu­ro­science can be applied to enhance brain health and per­for­mance, and who is will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in a fast-paced course that lever­ages e‑learning to facil­i­tate a glob­al learn­ing experience.

Note: In order to ensure a valu­able and inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence, par­tic­i­pa­tion will be lim­ited to the first 200 indi­vid­u­als who register.

Fac­ul­ty:

  • Instruc­tor: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (Sharp­Brains)
  • Guest Lec­tur­ers: Alvaro Pas­cual-Leone (Har­vard Med­ical School), Robert M. Bilder (UCLA Semel Insti­tute for Neu­ro­science and Human Behavior)

To Learn More and Reg­is­ter, please vis­it the course page: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012.

Neuroscience Boot Camp: For Anybody who Needs to Understand, Predict or Influence Human Behavior

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I am writ­ing to share some infor­ma­tion about our third annu­al “Neu­ro­science Boot Camp,” which I think the read­ers of the Sharp­Brains blog will find interesting.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia announces their 3rd annu­al Neu­ro­science Boot Camp, July 31-August 10, 2011!

Why Neu­ro­science Boot Camp?

Neu­ro­science is increas­ing­ly rel­e­vant to a num­ber of pro­fes­sions and aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­plines beyond its tra­di­tion­al med­ical appli­ca­tions. Lawyers, edu­ca­tors, econ­o­mists and busi­ness­peo­ple, [Read more…] about Neu­ro­science Boot Camp: For Any­body who Needs to Under­stand, Pre­dict or Influ­ence Human Behavior

Daniel Goleman: Yes, You Can Build Willpower (meditate on neuroplasticity!)

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(Edi­tor’s note: Daniel Gole­man is now con­duct­ing a series of audio inter­views includ­ing a great one with Richard David­son on Train­ing the Brain. We are hon­ored to bring you this guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

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Yes, You Can: 

New research sug­gests we can build our willpower

– By Daniel Goleman

Those of us who strug­gle to resist junk foods or oth­er­wise suf­fer a lack of willpow­er will be heart­ened by some good news from neu­ro­science. But there’s some bad news, too.

First, the bad news. A slew of stud­ies sug­gest that we each have a fixed neur­al reser­voir of willpow­er, and that if we use it on one thing, we have less for oth­ers. Tasks that demand some self-con­trol make it hard­er for us to do the next thing that takes willpower.

In a typ­i­cal exper­i­ment on this effect, one group of peo­ple was made to watch a video of a bor­ing scene; anoth­er was not. Then both groups had to cir­cle every “e” in a long pas­sage of writ­ing. The result? The peo­ple who had to first sit through the bor­ing video gave up faster. The same loss of per­sis­tence has been found when peo­ple try to resist tempt­ing foods, sup­press emo­tion­al reac­tions, or even make the effort to try to impress someone.

This all sug­gests we have a fixed willpow­er bud­get, one we should be care­ful in spend­ing. Some neu­ro­sci­en­tists sus­pect that self-con­trol con­sumes blood sug­ar, which takes a while to build up again; thus, the deple­tion effect.

But the good news is that we can grow our willpow­er; like a mus­cle, the more we use it, the more it grad­u­al­ly increas­es over time. But doing this takes, of all things, willpower.

As the mus­cle of will grows, the larg­er our reser­voir of self-dis­ci­pline becomes. So peo­ple who are able to [Read more…] about Daniel Gole­man: Yes, You Can Build Willpow­er (med­i­tate on neuroplasticity!)