Harvard

Next in Human Resources: Seeing cognitive diversity as an asset to build on, not a problem to avoid

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brains_neurodiversityNeu­ro­di­ver­si­ty: The Ben­e­fits of Recruit­ing Employ­ees with Cog­ni­tive Dis­abil­i­ties (Har­vard Busi­ness School’s Work­ing Knowledge):

There’s a new fron­tier in diver­si­ty pro­grams focused not on race or gen­der but on cog­ni­tive ability.

The grow­ing inter­est in neurodiversity—hiring peo­ple with cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties like Autism Spec­trum Dis­or­der (ASD)—is moti­vat­ed by com­pa­nies look­ing to tap into [Read more…] about Next in Human Resources: See­ing cog­ni­tive diver­si­ty as an asset to build on, not a prob­lem to avoid

Upcoming talks: ESCoNS2, Harvard, WEF, Neurogaming, mesh13

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speakerHeads up: these are some of the talks I’ll be giv­ing over the next few months. If you’re a Sharp­Brains friend and speak­ing at/ attend­ing any, please let me know so we can connect.

> March 15–17, Los Ange­les: Mar­riage of Sci­ence & Indus­try — How to cre­ate a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el that proves end-user val­ue, at ESCoNS2 (Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Society)

> April 1st, Boston: Health from the Neck Up, a guest lec­ture at Har­vard exten­sion course Mind, Brain, Health, and Edu­ca­tion (MBHE): The Sci­ences of Devel­op­ment, Learn­ing, and Well-being

> April 23–25, Lima, Peru: World Eco­nom­ic Forum on Latin Amer­i­ca 2013

> May 1–2, San Fran­cis­co: Think, Think, Think: Cog­ni­tive Gam­ing Plat­forms, at Neu­rogam­ing

> May 15–16, Toron­to:  The Web as a Gym for the Brain, at mesh13  [Read more…] about Upcom­ing talks: ESCoNS2, Har­vard, WEF, Neu­rogam­ing, mesh13

Top 40 Brain Fitness & Training Questions/ Course Registration Ends this Sunday

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Let us share below a list of 40 com­mon brain fit­ness, brain health, brain train­ing ques­tions that we will make sure to address dur­ing the upcom­ing online course, How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012 (starts March 7th). The ques­tions are sequenced by their approx­i­mate order of appear­ance in the syl­labus. We look for­ward to an engag­ing, inter­ac­tive and valu­able expe­ri­ence! ***Please remem­ber that course reg­is­tra­tion ends on Sun­day, March 4th.***

Top 40 Brain Fit­ness & Train­ing Questions

  1. How can one define brain fitness
  2. What is link between stress, focus and memory
  3. Does “brain age” even exist
  4. How to enhance over­all men­tal pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, vs just IQ
  5. Is there some “ceil­ing” to my improve­ment or can I always try more things
  6. How brain func­tions evolve with age. What improves, what declines, what should I be pay­ing atten­tion to [Read more…] about Top 40 Brain Fit­ness & Train­ing Questions/ Course Reg­is­tra­tion Ends this Sunday

Research: Could studying the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine?

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The Pow­er of Noth­ing: Could study­ing the place­bo effect change the way we think about med­i­cine? (The New Yorker):

“For years, Ted Kaptchuk per­formed acupunc­ture at a tiny clin­ic in Cam­bridge, a few miles from his cur­rent office, at the Har­vard Med­ical School. He opened for busi­ness in 1976, hav­ing just returned from Asia, where he had spent four years hon­ing his craft. Not long after he arrived in Boston, he treat­ed an Armen­ian woman for chron­ic bron­chi­tis. A few weeks lat­er, the woman returned with her hus­band and told Kaptchuk that he had “cured” her.” [Read more…] about Research: Could study­ing the place­bo effect change the way we think about medicine?

Alzheimer’s Disease: New Survey and Research Study on Awareness, Testing and Prevention

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Very inter­est­ing new data rein­forc­ing two main themes we have been ana­lyz­ing for a while:
1) We bet­ter start pay­ing seri­ous atten­tion (and R&D dol­lars) to lifestyle-based and non-inva­sive cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al health inter­ven­tions, which are most­ly ignored in favor of inva­sive, drug-based options
2) Inter­ven­tions will need to be per­son­al­ized. The study below ana­lyzes data at the coun­try lev­el, but the same log­ic applies to the indi­vid­ual level

Many fear Alzheimer’s, want to be test­ed: sur­vey (Reuters):

- “The tele­phone sur­vey of 2,678 adults aged 18 and old­er in the Unit­ed States, France, Ger­many, Spain and Poland was con­duct­ed by researchers at the Har­vard School of Pub­lic Health and [Read more…] about Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: New Sur­vey and Research Study on Aware­ness, Test­ing and Prevention

Why Smart Brains Make Stupid Decisions

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It hap­pens. Often.

Why?

We just secured an inter­view with Ori Braf­man, co-author of Sway: The Irre­sistible Pull of Irra­tional Behav­ior (Dou­ble­day Busi­ness, 2008), to dis­cuss our Dark Side (well, he calls it “dif­fer­ent hid­den forces” and “psy­cho­log­i­cal undercurrents”).

While read­ing some reviews about his book, I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed find­ing, after the usu­al impres­sive long col­lec­tion of endorse­ments, this “dis­claimer”:

*DISCLAIMER: If you decide to buy this book because of these endorse­ments, you just got swayed. One of the psy­cho­log­i­cal forces you’ll read about in Sway is our ten­den­cy to place a high­er val­ue on opin­ions from peo­ple in posi­tions of promi­nence, pow­er, or author­i­ty. (But you should still buy the book.)

[Read more…] about Why Smart Brains Make Stu­pid Decisions