Minding the Aging Brain

By Dr. Joshua Steinerman | February 20, 2008 |

Cog­ni­tive train­ing (the basis for what we call “brain fit­ness” these days) has a wide array of appli­ca­tions. The most recent one, which is cap­tur­ing pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, monop­o­liz­ing media cov­er­age, and cre­at­ing cer­tain con­fu­sion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are for­tu­nate to have Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, one of our new Expert Con­trib­u­tors, offer today his…

Read More

Math Brain Teaser: Concentric Shapes or The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

By Caroline Latham | May 8, 2007 |

If you missed Part 1, also writ­ten by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll, you can start there and then come back here to Part 2. Con­cen­tric Shapes: The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2.Difficulty: HARDER Type: MATH (Spatial)Question:Imagine a square with­in a cir­cle with­in a square.The cir­cle just grazes each square at exact­ly four points.Find the ratio of the area of the larg­er square to the smaller.In this puz­zle you are work­ing out many of the same skills as in Part I: spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­o­ry (tem­po­ral lobes), log­ic (frontal lobes), plan­ning (frontal lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).Click to read the Solu­tion and Explanation.

Read More

Math Brain Teaser: The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 1 of 2

By Caroline Latham | April 27, 2007 |

Here is anoth­er math­e­mat­i­cal puz­zle from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll … The Unkind­est Cut Of All, Part 1 of 2.Difficulty: HARD.Type: MATH (Spatial).Question:The area of a square is equal to the square of the length of one side.So, for exam­ple, a square with side length 3 has area (3^2), or 9. What is the area of a square whose diag­o­nal is length 5?

Read More