On physical activity, neuroplasticity, depression, screen time, neuromodulation and more

By SharpBrains | October 29, 2021

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time eight sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a few fun brain teasers. #1. Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-mod­­el­ing): “Girls who spent less than an hour on screens and boys who spent less than…

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Rationality doesn’t equal efficiency: Cellphone data shows how we navigate cities

By The Conversation | October 19, 2021

Think of your morn­ing walk to work, school or your favorite cof­fee shop. Are you tak­ing the short­est pos­si­ble route to your des­ti­na­tion? Accord­ing to big data research that my col­leagues and I con­duct­ed, the answer is no: People’s brains are not wired for opti­mal nav­i­ga­tion. Instead of cal­cu­lat­ing the short­est path, peo­ple try to…

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Managing information flow based on user’s mental state and cognitive load: Key Neurotech Patent #19

By SharpBrains | February 23, 2017
control presentation

This is anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing 2005 patent assigned to Microsoft, help­ing man­age the pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion based on user’s men­tal and phys­i­cal state and cog­ni­tive load (and, yes, desired lev­el of pri­va­cy). U.S. Patent No. 6,874,127: Method and sys­tem for con­trol­ling pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion to a user based on the user’s con­di­tion. Assignee(s): Microsoft Cor­po­ra­tion Inventor(s): Dan Newell, Ken­neth H.…

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Increasing cognitive loads on miners’ brains: good example of where society is heading

By SharpBrains | September 26, 2012

NIOSH to Study Cog­ni­tive Loads on Under­ground Coal Min­ers (Occu­pa­tion­al Health & Safe­ty): “NIOSH has pub­lished a notice out­lin­ing an inter­est­ing study it plans to under­take to under­stand the cog­ni­tive demands placed on under­ground coal min­ers by new safe­ty devices they must car­ry, with the indus­try increas­ing­ly deploy­ing wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, per­son­al dust mon­i­tors, and prox­im­i­ty detectors……

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