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curiosity

Could I be wrong? Exploring cognitive bias, curiosity, intellectual humility, and lifelong learning

November 30, 2021 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing eight time­ly sci­en­tif­ic and indus­try news plus a few fun teasers to appre­ci­ate our unique human brains.

#1. Could I be wrong? Explor­ing research on cog­ni­tive bias, curios­i­ty, intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty, and life­long learning

“None of us thinks that our beliefs and atti­tudes are incor­rect; if we did, we obvi­ous­ly wouldn’t hold those beliefs and atti­tudes. Yet, despite our sense that we are usu­al­ly cor­rect, we must accept that our views may some­times turn out to be wrong. This kind of humil­i­ty isn’t sim­ply virtuous—the research sug­gests that it results in bet­ter deci­sions, rela­tion­ships, and out­comes. So, the next time you feel cer­tain about some­thing, you might stop and ask your­self: Could I be wrong?”

#2. Great inter­view on bilin­gual­ism, sports, edu­ca­tion and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty — en español

#3. Should old­er politi­cians, and oth­er lead­ers, under­go cog­ni­tive test­ing? The debate con­tin­ues … here are some good com­ments from the online debate we had last summer:

  • PRO: “Def­i­nite­ly. We rou­tine­ly screen appli­cants for a wide range of jobs. Apply for the police, you will be test­ed. Join the mil­i­tary, you will be eval­u­at­ed. Should we not know if a can­di­date for the high­est posi­tion in the coun­try has a seri­ous emo­tion­al, intel­lec­tu­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal impairment?”
  • CON: “I dis­agree because these tests are very bad at pre­dict­ing how good some­one would be in lead­ing a coun­try. It doesn’t require the abil­i­ty to store a lot of infor­ma­tion in your work­ing mem­o­ry. Being a good leader requires only one essen­tial thing: hav­ing the right priorities.”
  • IT DEPENDS: “Who makes the test? What cog­ni­tive met­rics do we use? The bias­es in that design could lead to sig­nif­i­cant unex­pect­ed or even inten­tion­al­ly skewed results.”

#4. Click Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es fur­ther $52M to build up dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pipeline for depres­sion, insom­nia, smok­ing ces­sa­tion and more

What a year for Click and for dig­i­tal therapeutics!

#5. The Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Monitoring

The road to heav­en is paved with good decisions…

#6. FDA-approved, Cybin-spon­sored clin­i­cial tri­al to mea­sure ketamine’s impact on the brain via Ker­nel Flow neu­roimag­ing helmet

“The word psy­che­del­ic means ‘mind-man­i­fest­ing,’ but what has been miss­ing is use­ful ‘mind-imaging’—the abil­i­ty to dynam­i­cal­ly trace the neur­al cor­re­lates of human con­scious expe­ri­ence. Con­ven­tion­al neu­roimag­ing just isn’t dynam­ic enough to study the psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence in the brain as it hap­pens. This study of ketamine’s psy­che­del­ic effects while wear­ing head­gear equipped with sen­sors to record brain activ­i­ty could open up new fron­tiers of under­stand­ing” — Dr. Alex Belser, Cybin’s Chief Clin­i­cal Officer

#7. Bea­con Biosig­nals rais­es $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neu­ro­bio­mark­er dis­cov­ery platform

“ana­lyz­ing EEGs is labor inten­sive and inter­pre­ta­tion of these tests can vary from one clin­i­cian to another..…Beacon Biosig­nals has assem­bled what it claims is one of the world’s largest clin­i­cal EEG data­bas­es. By apply­ing its pro­pri­etary machine-learn­ing algo­rithms to the data­base, the com­pa­ny says it has iden­ti­fied neurobiomarkers—biological indi­ca­tors that are asso­ci­at­ed with cer­tain groups of patients, drug activ­i­ty, and ther­a­peu­tic efficacy.”

#8. Amy­loid-relat­ed imag­ing abnor­mal­i­ties (ARIA) found in approx­i­mate­ly 40% of patients tak­ing “Alzheimer’s drug” Aduhelm

Not good, yet com­plete­ly pre­dictable, and let’s remem­ber this is for a “treat­ment” cost­ing as much as $100,000/ year with exact­ly ZERO proven clin­i­cal ben­e­fit: “…The researchers found 425 cas­es in the com­bined adu­canum­ab group expe­ri­enced ARIA (41.3%), and ARIA-ede­ma was iden­ti­fied in 362 patients or 35.2%. Of them, 94 (26%) had symp­toms, such as headache, con­fu­sion, dizzi­ness and nau­sea. They found ARIA-micro­he­m­or­rhage and ARIA-super­fi­cial sidero­sis in 197 patients (19.1%) and 151 patients (14.7%), respectively.”

Final­ly, Let’s Thank our unique Human Brains and Minds with a few fam­i­ly-friend­ly riddles

Q: What does, “you must come and vis­it us some­time!” actu­al­ly mean?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a Hap­py & Healthy Hanukkah, Decem­ber and Christmas,

The Sharp­Brains Team

 

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: aducanumab, Aduhelm, Alzheimer's drug, Beacon Biosignals, Click Therapeutics, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Monitoring, cognitive-bias, cognitive-testing, curiosity, Cybin, depression, digital therapeutics, FDA, insomnia, intellectual humility, Kernel Flow, machine-learning, neuroimaging, neuroplasticity, psychedelic, smoking cessation

Could I be wrong? Exploring research on cognitive bias, curiosity, intellectual humility, and lifelong learning

November 10, 2021 by Greater Good Science Center

A few years ago, I asked a sam­ple of adults to think about all of the dis­agree­ments that they have with oth­er peo­ple, from minor dis­agree­ments about rel­a­tive­ly unim­por­tant issues to major dis­agree­ments about impor­tant mat­ters. Then, I asked them to esti­mate the per­cent­age of dis­agree­ments they have with oth­er peo­ple in which they are the one who is correct.

Only 4% of the respon­dents indi­cat­ed they were right less than half of the time, and only 14% said they were right half of the time. The vast majority—a whop­ping 82%—reported that, when they dis­agreed with oth­er peo­ple, they were usu­al­ly the one who was right! (Pause a moment to ask your­self the same ques­tion: In what per­cent­age of the dis­agree­ments that you have with oth­er peo­ple are you the one who’s right?) [Read more…] about Could I be wrong? Explor­ing research on cog­ni­tive bias, curios­i­ty, intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty, and life­long learning

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: cognitive, cognitive biases, cognitive entrenchment, curiosity, disagreement, Education & Lifelong Learning, intellectual humility, Lifelong-learning, meta-cognitive, overconfidence bias

Transcript: Alvaro Fernandez on Brain Health and Non-invasive Cognitive Enhancement

November 16, 2011 by SharpBrains

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on life­long cog­ni­tive fit­ness, “men­tal cap­i­tal­ism”, and more,  with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, mod­er­at­ed by Har­ry Moody, Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs at AARP.

[Read more…] about Tran­script: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on Brain Health and Non-inva­sive Cog­ni­tive Enhancement

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: AARP, aerobic-exercise, Applied-Cognitive-Engineering, attention, biofeedback, blood-pressure, brain function improvement, brain-function, Brain-health, cogmed, cognifit, cognition, cognitive-enhancement, cognitive-fitness, cognitive-reserve, cognitive-therapy, crossword-puzzles, curiosity, Dakim, FDA, fitness, heartmath, Helicor, Houghton-Mifflin, human development, information-processing, intelligence, InterCure, Learning-Enhancement-Corporation, lumos-labs, medical profession, meditation, mental capital, mental capitalism, mental-abilities, mental-exercise, mental-fitness, NIH, nintendo, NovaVision, PBS, Posit-Science, scientific-brain-training, Scientific-Learning, self-regulation, transcript, videogames, Vivity-Labs, Wild-Divine, Working-memory

A Love affair Across Generations: A Lamarckian Reincarnation?

February 14, 2009 by Dr. Robert Sylwester

Eric Jensen alert­ed me to a research study pub­lished in the Feb­ru­ary 4th Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science — Trans­gen­er­a­tional Res­cue of a Genet­ic Defect in Long-Term Poten­ti­a­tion and Mem­o­ry For­ma­tion by Juve­nile Enrich­ment. We both had the same ini­tial WOW! feel­ing that we had expe­ri­enced when we first read about the dis­cov­ery of mir­ror neu­rons a decade+ ago.

The study’s find­ings seemed to sug­gest that acquired char­ac­ter­is­tics can be genet­i­cal­ly trans­mit­ted, a Lamar­ck­i­nan belief that had long been dis­card­ed by biol­o­gists. This seemed improb­a­ble, so we decid­ed to check out what the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty thought. It’s the kind of research that edu­ca­tors cer­tain­ly need to under­stand because the poten­tial edu­ca­tion­al impli­ca­tions are pro­found, no mat­ter how this par­tic­u­lar study sorts out.

I’ve thus append­ed the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion below: (1) the abstract and ref­er­ence of the orig­i­nal sttudy, (2) a link to a non-tech­ni­cal report in the cur­rent issue of New Sci­en­tist, (3) a link to a non- tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion of the research in Med­ical News Today, and (4) a link to a recent extend­ed non-tech­ni­cal New Sci­en­tist arti­cle on the issue of non-genet­ic inher­i­tance. Eric will post his com­men­tary on the research in the March edi­tion of his Brighter Brain Bul­letin newsletter.

THE STUDY:

To put it sim­ply: The researchers stud­ied long-term poten­ti­a­tion (LTP), in which longer and more robust synap­tic acti­va­tion occurs. LTP is the basic mech­a­nism for learn­ing and mem­o­ry formation.

Juve­nile mice placed into an enriched envi­ron­ment (EE) devel­oped enhanced LTP capa­bil­i­ties that they lat­er trans­mit­ted to their own off­spring dur­ing embryo­ge­n­e­sis (rather than through lat­er mater­nal instruc­tion), and these effects per­sist­ed even when the off­spring weren’t in an EE. The study con­clud­ed that a stim­u­lat­ing juve­nile envi­ron­ment can thus influ­ence the com­po­si­tion of sig­nal­ing net­works that influ­ence synap­tic plas­tic­i­ty and mem­o­ry for­ma­tion in the enriched mouse, and also in its future offspring.

The prob­lem with this research appears to be over whether the trans­mit­ted effects occurred via genet­ic changes or through some­thing else in the moth­er’s uter­ine envi­ron­ment. A female’s eggs devel­op ear­ly in life to be dis­trib­uted lat­er, so it’s improb­a­ble that a female’s juve­nile expe­ri­ences would alter the DNA in her eggs. A more prob­a­ble expla­na­tion may be that any changes in the moth­er’s brain that occur via an EE are rep­re­sent­ed as cur­rent­ly ill- under­stood sig­nal­ing mol­e­cules that pass through the pla­cen­tal bar­ri­er into the embry­on­ic brain.

THE SIGNIFICANCE:

For edu­ca­tors, this research sim­ply adds to our own strong belief that long-term ben­e­fits accrue from a stim­u­lat­ing ear­ly envi­ron­ment that encour­ages curios­i­ty and explo­ration. The research builds on [Read more…] about A Love affair Across Gen­er­a­tions: A Lamar­ck­ian Reincarnation?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: adolescent-brain, Biologists, Brain-Plasticity, cognition, cognitive-neuroscientists, curiosity, DNA, educational-policies, educators, embryogenesis, embryonic-brain, Genetics, Journal-of-Neuroscience, Lamarck, Learning, long-term-potentiation, LTP, Marian-Diamond, memory, mirror-neurons, offspring, Robert-Sylwester, synaptic-plasticity, William-Greenough

Neuroscience Core Concepts: What is “It” in Use It or Lose It?

November 25, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

We all have heard “Use It or Lose It”. Now, what is “It”? how does “it” work? why is “it” our best (and too often unrec­og­nized) friend?

The Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science (SfN) has just released a user-friend­ly pub­li­ca­tion titled Neu­ro­science Core Con­cepts, aimed at help­ing edu­ca­tors and the gen­er­al pub­lic learn more about the brain.

Descrip­tion: “Neu­ro­science Core Con­cepts offer fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples that one should know about the brain and ner­vous sys­tem, the most com­plex liv­ing struc­ture known in the uni­verse. They are a prac­ti­cal resource about:

  • - How your brain works and how it is formed.
  • - How it guides you through the changes in life.
  • - Why it is impor­tant to increase under­stand­ing of the brain.”

You will enjoy read­ing the web page explain­ing in detail 8 Neu­ro­science Core Con­cepts:

1| The brain is the body’s most com­plex organ.

2| Neu­rons com­mu­ni­cate using both elec­tri­cal and chem­i­cal sig­nals. [Read more…] about Neu­ro­science Core Con­cepts: What is “It” in Use It or Lose It?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: curiosity, healthy-living, human-brain, intelligence, life, nervous-system, Neurons, neuroscience, Neuroscience-Core-Concepts, SfN, Society-for-Neuroscience, Use-It-or-Lose-It

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