Harvard-Business-Review

Brain and Cognition Expert Contributors

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As you have prob­a­bly noticed, a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors are writ­ing in our blog, so that we can col­lec­tive­ly dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and brain health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­er­al for our every­day lives. 

If you haven’t done so already, make sure to sub­scribe to our newslet­ter (above) and our RSS feed (on the right).

Below you have the pro­files of some of our Con­trib­u­tors and links to their best arti­cles with us so far. Enjoy!

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The Science of Thinking Smarter

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John Med­i­na, Direc­tor of the Brain Cen­ter for Applied Learn­ing Research at Seat­tle Pacif­ic Uni­ver­si­ty, and author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School, wrote a great arti­cle for us on Brain Rules: sci­ence and prac­tice, Brain Rules-John Medinabring­ing brain research to dai­ly life.

We enjoyed the book very much since it pro­vides an excel­lent and engag­ing overview of recent brain research, so we are glad to see it reach­ing new cor­ners. You may enjoy these 2 new resources:

1) A 52-minute video based on his Google talk on April 8th: click Here. Great dis­cus­sion of the brain ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress management.

2) An inter­view at Har­vard Busi­ness Review, titled The Sci­ence of Think­ing Smarter. I enjoyed some of the exchanges, such as this one (though I find the ques­tion a bit mys­ti­fy­ing, are we assum­ing it is genes all that mat­ter for leadership?):

Ques­tion: In the absence of genet­ic test­ing, do you see any mer­it in the sort of psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing some busi­ness­es use, such as the Myers-Brig­gs test?
[Read more…] about The Sci­ence of Think­ing Smarter

Brain Rules: science and practice

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Inter­est­ed a good, non-tech­ni­cal, sum­ma­ry of the impli­ca­tions of recent brain sci­ence in Brain Rules-John Medinaour dai­ly lives? Biol­o­gist John Med­i­na offers that in his arti­cle below (as part of our Author Speaks Series) and in his new book: Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School. Enjoy!

(Note: John will be in the Bay Area on April 8 and 9th, speak­ing at Google and San Jose Rotary).

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Brain Rules

– By John Medina

Go ahead and mul­ti­ply the num­ber 8,388,628 x 2 in your head. Can you do it in a few sec­onds? There is a young man who can dou­ble that num­ber 24 times in the space of a few sec­onds. He gets it right every time. There is a boy who can tell you the exact time of day at any moment, even in his sleep. There is a girl who can cor­rect­ly deter­mine the exact dimen­sions of an object 20 feet away. There is a child who at age 6 drew such life­like and pow­er­ful pic­tures, she got her own show at a gallery on Madi­son Avenue. Yet none of these chil­dren could be taught to tie their shoes. Indeed, none of them have an IQ greater than 50.

The brain is an amaz­ing thing.

[Read more…] about Brain Rules: sci­ence and practice

Cognitive Fitness @ Harvard Business Review

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The Har­vard Busi­ness Review just pub­lished (thanks Cather­ine!) this arti­cle on cog­ni­tive fit­ness, by Rod­er­ick Gilkey and Clint Kilts. We are hap­py to see the grow­ing inter­est on how to main­tain healthy and pro­duc­tive brains, from a broad­en­ing num­ber of quar­ters. With­out hav­ing yet ful­ly read the article…it seems to pro­vide a rea­son­able intro­duc­tion to brain sci­ence, yet could have more beef regard­ing assess­ment, train­ing and rec­om­men­da­tions. In such an emerg­ing field, though, going one step at a time makes sense. What real­ly mat­ters is thet fact itself that it was published.

The HBR Descrip­tion of the article:

Recent neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic research shows that the health of your brain isn’t, as experts once thought, just the prod­uct of child­hood expe­ri­ences and genet­ics; it reflects your adult choic­es and expe­ri­ences as well. Pro­fes­sors Gilkey and Kilts of Emory Uni­ver­si­ty’s med­ical and busi­ness schools explain how you can strength­en your brain’s anato­my, neur­al net­works, and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, and pre­vent func­tions such as mem­o­ry from dete­ri­o­rat­ing as you age. The brain’s alert­ness is the result of what the authors call cog­ni­tive fitness–a state of opti­mized abil­i­ty to rea­son, remem­ber, learn, plan, and adapt. Cer­tain atti­tudes, lifestyle choic­es, and exer­cis­es enhance cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Men­tal work­outs are the key. Brain-imag­ing stud­ies indi­cate that acquir­ing exper­tise in areas as diverse as play­ing a cel­lo, jug­gling, speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage, and dri­ving a taxi­cab expands your neur­al sys­tems and makes them more com­mu­nica­tive. In oth­er words, you can alter the phys­i­cal make­up of your brain by learn­ing new skills. The more cog­ni­tive­ly fit you are, the bet­ter equipped you are to make deci­sions, solve prob­lems, and deal with stress and change. [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness @ Har­vard Busi­ness Review

Stress Management for Lawyers

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The ABA (Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion) Jour­nal has a good arti­cle titled Law Hacks: 101 tips, tricks and tools to make you a more pro­duc­tive, less stressed-out lawyer, com­bin­ing tips on email usage, soft­ware, and some brain tips from us:

  • 67 “The Web site Sharp­Brains sug­gests self-improve­ment exer­cis­es. Try this one: Take five-minute visu­alization breaks with deep and reg­u­lar breath­ing, pic­tur­ing beau­ti­ful land­scapes or pleas­ant or suc­cess­ful mem­o­ries, espe­cial­ly after fin­ish­ing a tough task.”
  • 68 “Improve your men­tal acu­ity by sub­tract­ing num­bers, i.e., 7 from 200 (200, 193, 186, 179 …) or prac­tic­ing an expo­nen­tial series (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 …). The point is not to become a math genius or be smarter than a fifth-grad­er, but just to keep your mind sharp.”
  • 69 “It takes a sys­tem to be pro­duc­tive, but it’s also use­ful to try some­thing dif­fer­ent every day to stay sharp. For exam­ple, try com­mut­ing dif­fer­ent­ly or talk­ing to new people.”

Some more tips? 

Random Learning? the 8 Random Facts Meme

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Orli from Neu­ron­tic tagged me with a new meme –writ­ing about 8 Ran­dom Per­son­al Facts- that is cir­cu­lat­ing among sci­ence blog­gers.  Well, I will hap­pi­ly write about 8 facts that appeared in unex­pect­ed ways yet, seen with per­spec­tive, seem to be a type of non-ran­dom ran­dom­ness, if that makes sense…  

  1. As the old­est child, I was the most responsible/ serious/ with best grades…you get the pic­ture. One of my youngest sib­lings spe­cial­ized in teas­ing me and mak­ing my life dif­fi­cult (from my per­spec­tive then). At some point, I real­ized that my auto­mat­ic men­tal reac­tion to any­thing sus­pi­cious that hap­pened in my life (my bike is not where I left it, there are 2 books miss­ing…) was an angry “this must have been my broth­er!” fol­lowed by intra-fam­i­ly con­flict and the need for UN peace­keep­ers. Let’s say he was respon­si­ble for only 40% of such events…so I real­ized my atti­tude made no sense and it was some­thing I need­ed to con­trol. So, at some point, I devel­oped the men­tal habit of mak­ing fun of my own stu­pid­i­ty when­ev­er that auto­mat­ic reac­tion appeared, and pro­tect­ing a more ratio­nal approach to solv­ing the problem.
  2. Around the same time, at a rou­tine meet­ing between my moth­er, school staff and myself, some­one made a com­ment along “Alvaro has spec­tac­u­lar grades, but he must under­stand that suc­cess in life does not depend on grades alone”. Fas­ci­nat­ing, I remem­ber think­ing, how can that be pos­si­ble? What may that mean? Is it not “fair” and self-evi­dent that if I have great grades every­thing good will fol­low in life? Maybe this opened my mind to under­stand­ing that “intel­li­gence” goes well beyond IQ…
  3. For many years I kept a jour­nal-like doc­u­ment with brief “lessons learned” and “concepts/ say­ings / real­i­ties I don’t under­stand yet”. Some­thing like a “diary of learn­ing and things to be learned”. I don’t keep such a doc­u­ment anymore…and cer­tain­ly not because now I under­stand everything.
  4. My last 2 years in high school were extreme­ly social, hav­ing relo­cat­ed to a [Read more…] about Ran­dom Learn­ing? the 8 Ran­dom Facts Meme