mental athletics

What excites you the most about your job?
As a Pro­fes­sor and the founder of Brain Train­ers Men­tal Fit­ness LLC, I love see­ing how the right infor­ma­tion can have a life-chang­ing effect on people.

Please tell us about your inter­est in applied brain sci­ence. What areas are you most inter­est­ed in? What moti­vat­ed you to pur­sue work in your field?
I’m an edu­ca­tor first and fore­most: I like to see peo­ple empow­ered with clear, accu­rate, and use­ful infor­ma­tion about their brains. Just under­stand­ing more about diet, exer­cise and sleep could rev­o­lu­tion­ize our soci­ety. Beyond edu­ca­tion, I’m espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in biofeed­back, neu­ro­feed­back, mind­ful­ness, men­tal ath­let­ics, and lucid dreaming.

What are 1–2 key things you’d like every per­son to under­stand regard­ing his/ her own brain and mind, that you think is com­mon­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed or not addressed in the pop­u­lar media?

Peo­ple just expect too much of human mem­o­ry. It’s not a record­ing device. I can’t count the num­ber of times some­one has come to me think­ing there was some­thing “wrong” with their mem­o­ry, only to describe lim­i­ta­tions that are per­fect­ly nor­mal. I’m con­sid­er­ing putting this on my tomb­stone: “There is noth­ing wrong with you!” [Read more…] about Matthew Bar­rett: Human mem­o­ry is not a record­ing device