Daniel-Goleman

New book by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describes four reasons why long-term meditation can lead to profound improvements in our minds, brains, and bodies

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Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion is every­where these days. From the class­room to the board room, peo­ple are jump­ing on the mind­ful­ness band­wag­on, hop­ing to dis­cov­er for them­selves some of its promised ben­e­fits, like bet­ter focus, more har­mo­nious rela­tion­ships, and less stress.

I too have start­ed a mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion prac­tice and have found it to be help­ful in my every­day life. But, as a sci­ence writer, I still have to won­der: Is all of the hype around mind­ful­ness run­ning ahead of the sci­ence? What does the research real­ly say about mind­ful­ness?  [Read more…] about New book by Daniel Gole­man and Richard David­son describes four rea­sons why long-term med­i­ta­tion can lead to pro­found improve­ments in our minds, brains, and bodies

Update: Public Libraries as Health Clubs for the Brain

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Here you have the July edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and Brain Fitnessbrain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

Pub­lic libraries have long offered the pub­lic more than books. And now, recent demo­graph­ic and sci­en­tif­ic trends are con­verg­ing to fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­form the role of libraries in our cul­ture. You may enjoy read­ing this recent arti­cle I wrote for the May-June 2009 Issue of Aging Today, the bimonth­ly pub­li­ca­tion of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging: Pub­lic Libraries: Com­mu­ni­ty-Based Health Clubs for the Brain.

The Big Picture

Can You Out­smart Your Genes? An Inter­view with Author Richard Nis­bett: David DiS­al­vo inter­views Richard Nis­bett, the author of Intel­li­gence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cul­tures Count, who has emerged as a per­sua­sive voice mar­shalling evi­dence to dis­prove the hered­i­ty-is-des­tiny argument.

Yes, You Can Build Willpow­er: Daniel Gole­man dis­cuss­es how the brain makes about 10,000 new cells every day, how they migrate to where they are need­ed, and how each cell can make around 10,000 con­nec­tions to oth­er brain cells. Impli­ca­tion? Med­i­tate, mind­ful­ly, and build pos­i­tive habits.

Bird’s Eye View of Cog­ni­tive Health Inno­va­tion: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez opened the Cog­ni­tive Health Track dur­ing the Games for Health Con­fer­ence (June 11–12th, Boston) with an overview of the seri­ous games, soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions that can help assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. The pre­sen­ta­tion is avail­able Here.

Brain Tests and Myths

The Best Mem­o­ry Tests, from the Alzheimer’s Action Plan: Dr. Murali Doraiswamy dis­cuss­es the Pros and Cons of the most com­mon assess­ments to iden­ti­fy cog­ni­tive prob­lems, includ­ing what the Mini-Men­tal State Exam (MMSE) does and doesn´t, and inno­v­a­tive com­put­er­ized neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests.

Debunk­ing 10 Brain Health Myths: Does your brain have a “Brain Age”? Is a Mag­ic Pill to “pre­vent mem­o­ry prob­lems” right around the cor­ner? Does “aging” equal “decline”? Check out the facts to debunk 10 com­mon myths on brain health.

Resources

Free Webi­nar: On July 21st, 10am Pacif­ic Time/ 1pm East­ern Time, Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-authors of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, will cov­er the main high­lights from this new book and address the ques­tions sub­mit­ted by read­ers. You can learn more and reg­is­ter HERE.

Research Ref­er­ences:  This is a par­tial list of the sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies reviewed dur­ing the research phase of Sharp­Brain­s’s new book, orga­nized by rel­e­vant chap­ter, for those of you who like to explore top­ics in depth by read­ing orig­i­nal research (per­haps PubMed should pro­mote itself as a nev­er end­ing source of men­tal stimulation?).

Brain Teasers

Brain Teasers on Brain Fit­ness: Are you ready to test your knowl­edge of sev­er­al key brain fit­ness met­rics? For exam­ple: How many sol­diers in the US Army have gone through com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive test­ing before being deployed, and why?
Final­ly, a request: if you have already read The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, and could write a brief cus­tomer review at Amazon.com, we would sure­ly appre­ci­ate! The Amazon.com book page is Here.

Best regards, and enjoy the month

Daniel Goleman: Yes, You Can Build Willpower (meditate on neuroplasticity!)

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(Edi­tor’s note: Daniel Gole­man is now con­duct­ing a series of audio inter­views includ­ing a great one with Richard David­son on Train­ing the Brain. We are hon­ored to bring you this guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

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Yes, You Can: 

New research sug­gests we can build our willpower

– By Daniel Goleman

Those of us who strug­gle to resist junk foods or oth­er­wise suf­fer a lack of willpow­er will be heart­ened by some good news from neu­ro­science. But there’s some bad news, too.

First, the bad news. A slew of stud­ies sug­gest that we each have a fixed neur­al reser­voir of willpow­er, and that if we use it on one thing, we have less for oth­ers. Tasks that demand some self-con­trol make it hard­er for us to do the next thing that takes willpower.

In a typ­i­cal exper­i­ment on this effect, one group of peo­ple was made to watch a video of a bor­ing scene; anoth­er was not. Then both groups had to cir­cle every “e” in a long pas­sage of writ­ing. The result? The peo­ple who had to first sit through the bor­ing video gave up faster. The same loss of per­sis­tence has been found when peo­ple try to resist tempt­ing foods, sup­press emo­tion­al reac­tions, or even make the effort to try to impress someone.

This all sug­gests we have a fixed willpow­er bud­get, one we should be care­ful in spend­ing. Some neu­ro­sci­en­tists sus­pect that self-con­trol con­sumes blood sug­ar, which takes a while to build up again; thus, the deple­tion effect.

But the good news is that we can grow our willpow­er; like a mus­cle, the more we use it, the more it grad­u­al­ly increas­es over time. But doing this takes, of all things, willpower.

As the mus­cle of will grows, the larg­er our reser­voir of self-dis­ci­pline becomes. So peo­ple who are able to [Read more…] about Daniel Gole­man: Yes, You Can Build Willpow­er (med­i­tate on neuroplasticity!)

Update: Learning about Learning/ more on Brain Age

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Here you have the Jan­u­ary edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive Brain Fitnesshealth and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Bird’s Eye View 

Brain fit­ness heads towards its tip­ping point: How do you know when some­thing is mov­ing towards a Glad­wellian tip­ping point? When health insur­ance com­pa­nies and pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers launch sig­nif­i­cant ini­tia­tives. Dr. Ger­ard Finnemore pro­vides a mar­ket overview, based on Sharp­Brains’ client webi­nar held last December.

Ten Reflec­tions on Cog­ni­tive Health and Assess­ments: Here are 10 high­lights from sev­er­al stim­u­lat­ing Jan­u­ary events:  Sym­po­sium on Adap­tive Tech­nol­o­gy for the Aging (by Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty), Health Blog­gers’ Sum­mit (by Con­sumer Reports), Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury (by Vet­er­an Affairs in Palo Alto), and a new Alzheimer’s/ Demen­tia Expert Pan­el orga­nized by the city of San Francisco.

News and Events

Nin­ten­do Brain Age vs. Cross­word Puz­zles: we need much pub­lic edu­ca­tion in order to help con­sumers sep­a­rate real­i­ty from hope from hype. Nin­ten­do is not help­ing, nei­ther is media reporting.

Col­lec­tion of recent news: includ­ing train­ing for senior fit­ness train­ers, reports on the impor­tance of pur­pose,  on old­er dri­ver safe­ty, and more.

Upcom­ing events: I will be speak­ing soon at the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging/ NCOA con­fer­ence, and the Sil­ver­ing Work­force Sum­mit at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na. Let me know if you are attend­ing any.

Edu­ca­tion and Learning 

Learn­ing about Learn­ing: an Inter­view with Joshua Wait­zkin: Scott Bar­ry Kauf­man inter­views “child prodi­gy” Joshua Wait­zkin on The Art of Learn­ing. Many fas­ci­nat­ing insights, includ­ing “I think los­ing my first Nation­al Chess Cham­pi­onship was the great­est thing that ever hap­pened to me, because it helped me avoid many of the psy­cho­log­i­cal traps…(associated with being called a “child prodigy”)”.

Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tion­al intel­li­gence: Daniel Gole­man intro­duces edu­ca­tors and par­ents to a new book that “adds an impor­tant tool to the emo­tion­al intel­li­gence kit: mind­ful­ness, a moment-by-moment aware­ness of one’s inter­nal state and exter­nal environment.”

Resources

Top 10 Cog­ni­tive Health and Brain Fit­ness Books: Here you have The 10 Most Pop­u­lar Brain Fit­ness & Cog­ni­tive Health Books, based on book pur­chas­es by Sharp­Brains’ read­ers dur­ing 2008.

10-Ques­tion Pro­gram Eval­u­a­tion Check­list: To help con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als nav­i­gate through the grow­ing num­ber of pro­grams mak­ing “brain fit­ness” or “brain train­ing” claims, we pub­lished last year this Eval­u­a­tion Check­list. Now we are mak­ing the Check­list avail­able as a Book­mark giv­en recent requests by uni­ver­si­ties and con­fer­ence organizers.

Brain Teas­er

Brain Teas­er to Exer­cise your Mem­o­ry and Rea­son­ing Skills: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon offers a stim­u­lat­ing teas­er that not only helps exer­cise our brain but also edu­cates us on how and why the same activ­i­ty may exer­cise dif­fer­ent brains dif­fer­ent­ly — depend­ing on where we are from.

Resources to help students build emotional intelligence

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(Edi­tor’s note: Daniel Gole­man is now con­duct­ing a great series of audio inter­views includ­ing one with Richard David­son on Train­ing the Brain: Cul­ti­vat­ing Emo­tion­al Skills. We are hon­ored to bring you this guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

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Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tion­al intelligence

By Daniel Goleman

The scene: a first-grade class­room in a Man­hat­tan school. Not just any class­room this one has lots of Spe­cial Ed stu­dents, who are very hyper­ac­tive. So the room is a whirlpool of fren­zied activ­i­ty. The teacher tells the kids that they’re going to lis­ten to a CD. The kids qui­et down a bit.

Then they get pret­ty still as the CD starts, and a man’s voice asks the kids to lie down on their backs, arms at their sides, and get a “breath­ing bud­dy,” like a stuffed ani­mal, who will sit on their stom­achs and help them be aware of their breath­ing. The voice takes the chil­dren through a series of breath­ing and body aware­ness exer­cis­es, and the kids man­age to calm down and stay focused through the entire six min­utes, which ends with them wig­gling their toes.

“You’ve just learned how to make your body feel calm and relaxed,” says the voice. “And you can do this again any time you want.”

The voice on the CD is mine, though I’m read­ing the words of Lin­da Lantieri, who has pio­neered pub­lic school pro­grams in social and emo­tion­al learn­ing that have been adopt­ed worldwide.

Her newest pro­gram adds an impor­tant tool to the emo­tion­al intel­li­gence kit: mind­ful­ness, a moment-by-moment aware­ness of one’s inter­nal state and exter­nal envi­ron­ment. In a Building emotional intelligencenew book, Build­ing Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence, which comes with the CD, Lantieri uses mind­ful­ness train­ing to enhance con­cen­tra­tion and atten­tion among kids, and to help them learn to bet­ter calm them­selves. Build­ing Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence comes with instruc­tions that explain how teach­ers and par­ents can adapt Latier­i’s exer­cis­es to kids at dif­fer­ent age lev­els (five to sev­en, eight to 11, or 12 and up) and pro­vides detailed expla­na­tions of each exercise.

Lantier­i’s project exem­pli­fies the ways we can build on sci­en­tif­ic insights to help chil­dren mas­ter the skills of emo­tion­al intel­li­gence. As Richard David­son, founder of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Affec­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, explained to me in [Read more…] about Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tion­al intelligence

Update: Major Implications from Brain Research

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Here you have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please brainremem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Major Impli­ca­tions from Brain Research

Should Social-Emo­tion­al Learn­ing Be Part of Aca­d­e­m­ic Cur­ricu­lum?: It is clear by now that our brains are more than cog­ni­tive machines. For exam­ple, emo­tions can either enhance or inhib­it our abil­i­ty to learn. Daniel Gole­man explores the impli­ca­tions of “new stud­ies that reveal how teach­ing kids to be emo­tion­al­ly and social­ly com­pe­tent boost their aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment.” Brought to you in part­ner­ship with Greater Good Magazine.

Retain old­er work­ers beyond retire­ment: Busi­ness­Week cov­ers a best prac­tice in a top­ic of grow­ing impor­tance: how large com­pa­nies, such as Amer­i­can Express, can retain old­er work­ers in pro­duc­tive ways beyond a set arbi­trary retire­ment age. As Dr. Art Kramer told us recent­ly, “as a soci­ety, it is a mas­sive waste of tal­ent not to ensure old­er adults remain active and productive.”

Brain­Tech and Sus­tain­able Brains: Build­ing on a recent quote by John Doerr about clean tech­nol­o­gy trends, we won­der… “If Ener­gy is the moth­er of all markets…who would be the father of all mar­kets?” The Human Brain, perhaps?

Health and Research 

Exer­cis­ing the body is exer­cis­ing the mind: Dr. Adri­an Pre­da explains research con­duct­ed at Gage lab­o­ra­to­ry that sup­ports the mer­its for phys­i­cal exer­cise to be rec­og­nized as a form of brain exer­cise too.

What You Can do to Improve Mem­o­ry (and Why It Dete­ri­o­rates in Old Age): Is there any­thing we can do besides “exer­cise like crazy, eat healthy foods that you don’t like all that much, pop your statin pills, and take up yoga?” Yes: focus, focus, focus, sug­gests Dr. Bill Klemm.

News and Events 

Cog­ni­tive Health News August 2008: This is a roundup of recent brain health news and our com­men­tary, includ­ing the grow­ing adop­tion of Dakim and Nin­ten­do prod­ucts, the cog­ni­tive impact of videogames, and the cog­ni­tive dimen­sion of the obe­si­ty crisis.

Exer­cise your brain at these events: Alvaro will present the main find­ings from our mar­ket research at mul­ti­ple con­fer­ences in the US, Cana­da and Dubai dur­ing the rest of  the year.

Edu­ca­tion­al Resources

Where does the “Feel­ing of Know­ing” comes from?: Dr. Gin­ger Camp­bell shares some insights from her recent inter­view with neu­rol­o­gist Robert Bur­ton (author of On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not).“While it might be true that one can learn to become more aware of the emo­tion­al sig­nals com­ing from ones body, Dr. Bur­ton argues that “gut feel­ings” or intu­ition should not be assumed to be true with­out testing.”

Resources for Brain Health Across the Lifes­pan: Lau­rie Bar­tels shares a list of inter­views, video, arti­cles, and books that go hand-in-hand with the brain-relat­ed top­ics we cover.

Brain teas­er

Can you use men­tal self rota­tion to read a map?: please check out this teas­er by Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, one of our favorites so far.

We hope you have enjoyed this newslet­ter. We encour­age you to stay tuned for our Sep­tem­ber edi­tions, since great con­tent is com­ing. We will soon pub­lish an inter­view with Lee Woodruff, co-author of the book In An Instant: A Fam­i­ly’s Jour­ney of Love and Heal­ing, and dis­cuss the spec­tac­u­lar cog­ni­tive recov­ery of her hus­band, ABC reporter Bob Woodruff, who expe­ri­enced a trau­mat­ic brain injury in Iraq in 2006. We will also inter­view Dr. Mike Pos­ner, emi­nent cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist, to explore recent find­ings on atten­tion and atten­tion train­ing and their implications.