Workouts at the (New Yorker) brain gym

Good arti­cle on brain fit­ness and applied neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in the July 29th edi­tion of The New York­er, fea­tur­ing many Sharp­Brains friends. Men­tal­ly fit — Work­outs at the brain gym: “As recent­ly as a few decades ago, most biol­o­gists thought that the brain was ful­ly formed dur­ing child­hood and, like a pho­to­graph after it’s been devel­oped, was…

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Do you believe these neuromyths? Do we only use 10% of our brain?

Cour­tesy of the recent study Neu­romyths in edu­ca­tion: Preva­lence and pre­dic­tors of mis­con­cep­tions among teach­ers, by Sanne Dekker et al, here you have 32 brain-relat­ed state­ments. Are they cor­rect or incor­rect? We use our brains 24 h a day (C ). Chil­dren must acquire their native lan­guage before a sec­ond lan­guage is learned. If they do…

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Why Agile Minds Deploy Both Rational and Intuitive Problem-Solving

A rare aha moment in 2011 set me chas­ing new prob­lem-solv­ing research. The study Ratio­nal Ver­sus Intu­itive Prob­lem-Solv­ing: How Think­ing ‘Off the Beat­en Path’ Can Stim­u­late Cre­ativ­i­ty pub­lished in Psy­chol­o­gy of Aes­thet­ics, Cre­ativ­i­ty, and the Arts stung me out of a spot of intel­lec­tu­al arro­gance. From my per­spec­tive, John Dewey’s 19th cen­tu­ry step-wise 

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Transcript: Online Q&A on the Future of Brain Health with Alvaro Fernandez

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today, Fri­day March 16th, on brain sus­tain­abil­i­ty, retool­ing brain health, and applied neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Sharp­Brains’ Co-Founder who’s just been named a Young Glob­al Leader by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum. You can learn more about the top­ic by read­ing this 2011 Sharp­Brains Summit…

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Michael Merzenich on Brain Training, Assessments, and Personal Brain Trainers

Inter­view with Dr. Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at UCSF, a lead­ing pio­neer in brain plas­tic­i­ty research. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invent­ed the cochlear implant. In 1996, he was the found­ing CEO of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (Nas­daq: SCIL), and in 2004 became co-founder and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer of Posit Sci­ence. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1999 and to the Insti­tute of Med­i­cine this year. He retired as Fran­cis A. Sooy Pro­fes­sor and Co-Direc­tor of the Keck Cen­ter for Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Fran­cis­co in 2007. You may have learned about his work in one of PBS TV spe­cials, mul­ti­ple media appear­ances, or neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-relat­ed books.

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Brain Health News: Top Articles and Resources in March

There’s such a flood of very sig­nif­i­cant research stud­ies, edu­ca­tion­al resources and arti­cles relat­ed to brain health, it’s hard to keep track — even for us! Let me intro­duce and quote some of the top Brain Health Stud­ies, Arti­cles and Resources pub­lished in March: 1) Cog­ni­tive Decline Begins In Late 20s, Study Sug­gests (Sci­ence Dai­ly) — “These patterns…

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