Cognitive Neuroscience and ADD/ADHD Today

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 30, 2006 |

Some days ago we men­tioned atten­tion deficits and exec­u­tive func­tions, as part of a review of Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and Edu­ca­tion. Let me explore that in more depth now, hav­ing just met a num­ber of very inter­est­ing researchers, doc­tors and experts at CHADD con­fer­ence, and wit­nessed the first baby steps of a com­ing rev­o­lu­tion. First, 3…

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Cognitive Neuroscience and Education Today

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 19, 2006 |

Both The Quick and the Ed and Intel­li­gence Test­ing  blogs men­tion the Amer­i­can Edu­ca­tor arti­cle “Brain-based” Learn­ing: More Fic­tion than Fact, by cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist Daniel T. Will­ing­ham. The arti­cle does a very good job at debunk­ing some myths, and show­ing a skep­tic face to the edu­ca­tion­al val­ue of ultra-sophis­ti­­cat­ed fMRI scans. I ful­ly agree with…

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Reading emotions and faces

By SharpBrains | September 27, 2006 |

Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, when dis­cussing dif­fer­ent Frontal Lobe’s func­tions in his great Wis­dom Para­dox book, says that “Exec­u­tive intel­li­gence” includes “the abil­i­ty to pen­e­trate oth­er people’s minds, and that starts with an inter­est in oth­er people’s minds.” And what do we call a win­dow into oth­er peo­ple’s emo­tions? A face. Paul Ekman has con­duct­ed extensive…

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Executive Functions and MacArthur “Genius Grants”

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 27, 2006 |

The MacArthur Foun­da­tion has award­ed the 2006 MacArthur “Genius Grants” to 25 indi­vid­u­als for their “their cre­ativ­i­ty, orig­i­nal­i­ty, and poten­tial to be sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors in their fields”. We are hap­py that some friends received the award, and that we will be able to inter­view them here, in this blog. How were they able to accom­plish such…

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Brain exercise: how is this possible?

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 21, 2006 |

These 3 pic­tures rep­re­sent a sim­pli­fied image of brain activ­i­ty tak­en from right above our heads, with our forehead/ Frontal Lobes at the top of each image. Dark col­or indi­cates most activ­i­ty, light col­or some activ­i­ty. (Basic brain anato­my here). The 3 images show the brain activ­i­ty hap­pen­ing in 3 dif­fer­ent moments in time when one…

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The Executive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 8, 2006 |

Last week I had the plea­sure to meet with our sci­en­tif­ic advi­sor Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, renowned neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist and author of The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civ­i­lized Mind and The Wis­dom Para­dox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Old­er  Let me sum­ma­rize some of the key over­all research find­ings out­lined in…

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