manage-stress

Update: Test your stress level with this fun brain teaser

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pressure-performance-curve-400x300—

Time for Sharp­Brains’ July 2014 e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of thought-pro­vok­ing insights, sci­ence reports…and this fun brain teas­er to deter­mine your stress lev­el.

New think­ing:

New tools:

New sci­ence:

Final­ly, you may also want to try this teas­er to test your cog­ni­tive bias­es.

Enjoy, and have a great month of August!

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Brain Fitness: Definition, Priorities, and Links to Neuroleadership and Human Capital

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Yes­ter­day we had a fun ses­sion on Brain Fit­ness dur­ing the Neu­rolead­er­ship Sum­mit tak­ing place now in San Fran­cis­co, explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to enhance per­for­mance and health of lead­ers and work­forces by deploy­ing both old tools (like breath­ing and med­i­ta­tion) and new ones (such as biofeed­back and data­base-dri­ven per­son­al­ized brain train­ing solu­tions). Here are a cou­ple of the main ideas I want­ed to introduce:

A. Let’s define Brain Fit­ness as an “inte­grat­ed approach to enhance brain func­tion­al­i­ty”, com­bin­ing as appro­pri­ate lifestyle, inva­sive and non-inva­sive options. “Brain fit­ness” is above all an out­come, a cul­ture, sim­i­lar to “phys­i­cal fit­ness” (jok­ing­ly, I also said that “brain fit­ness” is the part of “phys­i­cal fit­ness” that “phys­i­cal fit­ness” does­n’t yet know what to do with)

B. Then, the ques­tion becomes, “what are the most impor­tant brain func­tions to enhance/ develop/ main­tain?”. Here I shared the fol­low­ing results [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness: Def­i­n­i­tion, Pri­or­i­ties, and Links to Neu­rolead­er­ship and Human Capital

Scientia Pro Publica #16: Us, Friends, and Society

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Wel­come to the 16th edi­tion  of Sci­en­tia Pro Pub­li­ca, the blog car­ni­val  that cel­e­brates the best sci­ence, nature and med­ical writ­ing pub­lished in the blo­gos­phere with­in the past 60 days.

What are some of the fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics you can explore and dis­cuss with this group of bloggers?

Sci­ence & Us

The Evolv­ing Mind: What’s the point of day­dream­ing?

Credit: Johan Stigwall, via Flickr
Cred­it: Johan Stig­wall, via Flickr

Gen­er­al­ly Think­ing: What is the brain impact of dif­fer­ent types of med­i­ta­tion (focused, open mon­i­tor­ing, compassion)?

The Emo­tion Machine: Can blog­ging help you con­trol your envi­ron­ment and man­age stress?

Greater Good Mag­a­zine: Want to live longer and bett­ter?

Col­lec­tive Imag­i­na­tion: Can you share a pow­er­ful uncan­ny expe­ri­ence?

Sci­ence & Friends

via LiveScience
via Live­Science

Lab Rat: Pros and Cons of hav­ing amphib­ian skin?

Sci­ence in Par­adise: Do sharks get can­cer?

Mau­ka to Makai: Can bun­nies offer new light on what comes after Via­gra, how to deal with nuclear feces, and new sources of electricity?

Kind of Curi­ous: Did dinousaurs migrate? dead or alive?

Migra­tions: Do beliefs on evo­lu­tion affect one’s abil­i­ty to appre­ci­ate bird­ing?

Sci­ence & Society

Sci­ence & Soul: Can we reverse corn mono­cul­ture trends?Lock1

Genomics Law Report: If a Direct-To-Con­sumer genomics com­pa­ny goes bank­rupt, what hap­pens to your data? does HIPAA cov­er it?

And this con­cludes today’s edi­tion.  Kelsey will host next edi­tion (Decem­ber 7th) at Mau­ka to Makai;  you can sub­mit posts using this handy form. And if you’re inter­est­ed in host­ing Sci­en­tia at your blog, con­tact Grrlsci­en­tist!

Meditation on the Brain: a Conversation with Andrew Newberg

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Dr_Andrew_NewbergDr. Andrew New­berg is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Radi­ol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try and Adjunct Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Reli­gious Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. He has pub­lished a vari­ety of neu­roimag­ing stud­ies relat­ed to aging and demen­tia. He has also researched the neu­ro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal cor­re­lates of med­i­ta­tion, prayer, and how brain func­tion is asso­ci­at­ed with mys­ti­cal and reli­gious expe­ri­ences. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez inter­views him here as part of our research for the book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age.

Dr. New­berg, thank you for being with us today. Can you please explain the source of your inter­ests at the inter­sec­tion of brain research and spirituality?

Since I was a kid, I had a keen inter­est in spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. I always won­dered how spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and reli­gion affect us, and over time I came to appre­ci­ate how sci­ence can help us explore and under­stand the world around us, includ­ing why we humans care about spir­i­tu­al prac­tices. This, of course, led me to be par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in brain research.

Dur­ing med­ical school I was par­tic­u­lar­ly attract­ed by the prob­lem of con­scious­ness. I was for­tu­nate to meet researcher Dr. Eugene D’Aquili in the ear­ly 1990s, who had been doing much research on reli­gious prac­tices effect on brain since the 1970s. Through him I came to see that brain imag­ing can pro­vide a fas­ci­nat­ing win­dow into the brain.

Can we define reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty ‑which sound to me as very dif­fer­ent brain processes‑, and why learn­ing about them may be help­ful from a pure­ly sec­u­lar, sci­en­tif­ic point of view?

Good point, def­i­n­i­tions mat­ter, since dif­fer­ent peo­ple may be search­ing for God in dif­fer­ent ways. I view being reli­gious as par­tic­i­pat­ing in orga­nized rit­u­als and shared beliefs, such as going to church. Being spir­i­tu­al, on the oth­er hand, is more of an indi­vid­ual prac­tice, whether we call it med­i­ta­tion, or relax­ation, or prayer, aimed at expand­ing the self, devel­op­ing a sense of one­ness with the universe.

What is hap­pen­ing is that spe­cif­ic prac­tices that have tra­di­tion­al­ly been asso­ci­at­ed with reli­gious and spir­i­tu­al con­texts may also be very use­ful from a main­stream, sec­u­lar, health point of view, beyond those con­texts. Sci­en­tists are research­ing, for exam­ple, what [Read more…] about Med­i­ta­tion on the Brain: a Con­ver­sa­tion with Andrew Newberg

Update: The State and Future of Brain Fitness

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Here you are have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our 10 most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please brainremem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

A cru­cial top­ic we cov­er is, “How can we use emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to keep our brains healthy and pro­duc­tive as long as pos­si­ble?” The Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging asked Alvaro to exer­cise his brain…and here are his thoughts on the cur­rent state and future of the brain fit­ness mar­ket: Brain Health Busi­ness Grows With Research and Demand

Announce­ments

Brain Train­ing Pre­sen­ta­tion and Sem­i­nars: We had an infor­ma­tive webi­nar this Tues­day. Click here to view the pre­sen­ta­tion and learn about upcom­ing events.

[Read more…] about Update: The State and Future of Brain Fitness