Virtual “Brain Games” roundtable: Why we can, and SHOULD, train our brains

In prepa­ra­tion for the new sea­son of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Brain Games, start­ing this Sun­day Feb­ru­ary 14th, their pro­duc­ers asked us to par­tic­i­pate in a vir­tu­al round­table around this thought-pro­­vok­ing ques­tion: Do you think indi­vid­u­als can train their brain to respond in a par­tic­u­lar way to cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, or do you think our brain’s innate “star­tle response”…

Read More

Can video games inspire altruism?

(Editor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine). Gam­ing for Good Research sug­gests that games like Lem­mings, where the goal is to help oth­ers, inspire real-life acts of altru­ism. — By Kyle Smith For years, video games have been linked to aggres­sion and vio­lence, with researchers and…

Read More

Brain and Cognition Expert Contributors

As you have prob­a­bly noticed, a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors are writ­ing in our blog, so that we can col­lec­tive­ly dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and brain health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­er­al for our every­day lives.  If you haven’t done so already, make sure to sub­scribe to our…

Read More

The Power of Mindsight-by Daniel Goleman

Daniel Gole­man requires no intro­duc­tion. Per­son­al­ly, of all his books I have read, the one I found most stim­u­lat­ing was Destruc­tive Emo­tions: A Sci­en­tif­ic Dia­logue With the Dalai Lama, a superb overview of what emo­tions are and how we can put them to good use. He is now con­duct­ing a great series of audio interviews…

Read More

Lifelong Learning and New Neurons in Adults

Very inter­est­ing new study, Crit­i­cal Peri­od Plas­tic­i­ty of Adult-Born Neu­rons, pub­lished in the jour­nal Neu­ron by a team of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine researchers. The press release New Adult Brain Cells May Be Cen­tral To Life­long Learn­ing con­tains a good sum­ma­ry (the bold for­mat is mine): “The steady for­ma­tion of new brain cells in…

Read More