Flexibility is good except when it isn’t: Study finds how scientists can reach different conclusions analyzing the same brain scans

By SharpBrains | August 4, 2020

Neu­roimag­ing: Many Ana­lysts, Dif­fer­ing Results (Dana Foun­da­tion): For decades, both the research and med­ical com­mu­ni­ties have relied on neu­roimag­ing tools like func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI) to give them a win­dow into the liv­ing human brain. Such scans have pro­vid­ed unprece­dent­ed insights into the brain’s struc­ture and func­tion – and the field, as a whole,…

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Think Fresh: When Is a Hammer Not a Hammer?

By Shlomo Breznitz & Collins Hemingway | August 21, 2012

Though the human brain is the most inno­v­a­tive instru­ment on earth, we remain a con­ser­v­a­tive species. Most of us relapse to old ways of think­ing even when we think we are doing some­thing new. Our brain’s “sim­i­lar equals iden­ti­cal” mech­a­nism, which comes from expe­ri­ence, is both a good and bad adap­ta­tion. Rely­ing on expe­ri­ence, which…

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Memory, Cognitive Abilities and Executive Functions

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 5, 2007

A mis­con­cep­tion we encounter often is that “mem­o­ry” is the only, or most impor­tant, “thing” that our brains do. And the only one we need to care for. We have a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, from atten­tion to pro­cess­ing speed to prob­lem-solv­ing to emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­­tion to, yes, mem­o­ry. (And more). Even mem­o­ry is not one whole…

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Is Intelligence Innate and Fixed?

By Alvaro Fernandez | November 10, 2007 |

Giv­en the recent James Wat­son “race and IQ” con­tro­ver­sy, I took on to read Stephan Jay Gould’s clas­sic book The Mis­mea­sure of Man, in which he debunks IQ (and the under­ly­ing “g”) as mea­sure of defined, innate, “intel­li­gence”. Fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing overall, very tech­ni­cal in some areas. The key take-away? In the last chap­ter, A Pos­i­tive Con­clu­sion, he…

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I have to exercise my brain, too

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 15, 2007 |

I was exposed to a fun brain exer­cise on Mon­day: attend my first-ever live TV pro­gram, be ready for 3 very pre­cise questions…and then be asked oth­ers. The anchors were fun. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to observe, behind the scenes, the mak­ing of a news pro­gram: con­stant last-minute appar­ent chaos, the lawyer in the “ask the…

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