information

The “Holy Grail”: How to drive behavior change by harnessing neuroplasticity and emotions

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brainbehavior—

CWRU nurs­ing school award­ed $2.35 mil­lion to study the link between the brain and health behav­ior change (press release):

“A five-year, $2.35 mil­lion grant from the Nation­al Insti­tute of Nurs­ing Research will allow researchers from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nurs­ing, Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences and the School of Med­i­cine at Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty to study how brain activ­i­ty moti­vates the chron­i­cal­ly ill to man­age their ill­ness­es [Read more…] about The “Holy Grail”: How to dri­ve behav­ior change by har­ness­ing neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and emotions

Learning to Cope with Google/ Information Overload

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Google chang­ing how humans think (Cana­di­an Business):

- “…the psy­chol­o­gists con­clud­ed that our reliance on the Inter­net has affect­ed how we relate to information—instead of remem­ber­ing the infor­ma­tion itself, we just remem­ber where to find it.”

- “While the move from know­ing infor­ma­tion to know­ing where to find it has many benefits—including free­ing up your brain for more rea­son­ing and ana­lyt­i­cal thinking—there’s a down­side too.” [Read more…] about Learn­ing to Cope with Google/ Infor­ma­tion Overload

Transcript: David DiSalvo on How Cultural Evolution Outpaces Natural Evolution and Old Brain Metaphors

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Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today with David DiS­al­vo, author of What makes your brain hap­py and why you should do the oppo­site, mod­er­at­ed by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez. You vis­it pre­vi­ous Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Full Tran­script (Light­ly edit­ed) of Live Q&A held on Decem­ber 9th, 2–3pm ET

[Read more…] about Tran­script: David DiS­al­vo on How Cul­tur­al Evo­lu­tion Out­paces Nat­ur­al Evo­lu­tion and Old Brain Metaphors

What makes your brain happy and why you should do the opposite

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(Edi­tor’s Note: This is an excerpt from David DiS­alvo’s new book What makes  your brain hap­py and why you should do the oppo­site.)

Tak­ing a posi­tion in any argument—large or small—is slip­pery busi­ness for our brains. We can have every inten­tion of hon­est­ly pur­su­ing an answer, yet still fool our­selves into think­ing our method is objec­tive when it is, in fact, any­thing but. Cog­ni­tive sci­ence has helped deci­pher this enig­ma with research on the the­o­ret­i­cal men­tal struc­tures our brains use to orga­nize infor­ma­tion, called schema­ta. [Read more…] about What makes your brain hap­py and why you should do the opposite

Learning with Video Games: A Revolution in Education and Training?

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In recent years, we have wit­nessed the begin­nings of a rev­o­lu­tion in edu­ca­tion.  Tech­nol­o­gy has fun­da­men­tal­ly altered the way we do many things in dai­ly life, but it is just start­ing to make head­way in chang­ing the way we teach.  Just as tele­vi­sion shows like Sesame Street enhanced the pas­sive learn­ing of infor­ma­tion for kids by teach­ing in a fun for­mat, elec­tron­ic games offer to great­ly enhance the way kids and adults are taught by active­ly engag­ing them in the process. [Read more…] about Learn­ing with Video Games: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Edu­ca­tion and Training?

Test your attentional focus: is multi-tasking a good thing?

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aaHow often do you lis­ten to the office gos­sip while fill­ing in forms? Or read a doc­u­ment while talk­ing on the phone with a client? Or think about your prob­lems at work while help­ing your child with his homework?

We are con­stant­ly assault­ed by lots of infor­ma­tion and often required to per­form sev­er­al tasks at once. It is not easy to stay focused. How­ev­er being able to stay focused is cru­cial to achieve suc­cess. Indeed, if you are lis­ten­ing to the office gos­sip while fill­ing in forms, you will prob­a­bly make mis­takes. If you try to read a doc­u­ment while talk­ing on the phone with a client, you will prob­a­bly sound dis­tant and unin­ter­est­ed to your client and may not get the con­tract you expect­ed to get. If you think about your prob­lems at work while help­ing your child with his home­work, you will prob­a­bly miss oppor­tu­ni­ties to teach her something.

As you may notice all the sit­u­a­tions above involve doing more than one thing at a time. Mul­ti-task­ing is ene­my num­ber one when it comes to accu­rate and speedy performance.

Human atten­tion is lim­it­ed. Think about your atten­tion­al focus as the beam of a light. If the light is on an object it can­not be on oth­er objects at the same time with the same inten­si­ty. Only dim light will be avail­able to light up the objects in the periph­ery. The same hap­pens in your atten­tion­al sys­tem. Divid­ing atten­tion results in less atten­tion­al pow­er devot­ed to all the dif­fer­ent tasks that you are try­ing to do at the same time. The more tasks, the less atten­tion can be devot­ed to each. The result is more errors and waste of time. Although we all have the feel­ing that mul­ti­task­ing saves us time, it is often not the case.

Try the exer­cise below to test your atten­tion­al focus. Three words have been com­bined to make this grid of let­ters. How many times does each of these words appear…? Can you com­pare your per­for­mance while search­ing for just one word vs. two of them at the same time?

How many times is the word SUN shown?
How many times is the word BUS shown?
How many times is the word NONE shown?

Solu­tions: [Read more…] about Test your atten­tion­al focus: is mul­ti-task­ing a good thing?