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I still remem­ber the time I tried to com­fort one of my best friends when her father died. Because I’d lost my own par­ents years before, I thought I under­stood her pain. But, when I offered sym­pa­thy, she balked. Her father’s death had been tran­scen­dent, filled with love and fam­i­ly con­nec­tion. She didn’t feel pain; she felt at peace. Read the rest of this entry »

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This med­i­ta­tion app is now worth $250 mil­lion and has Trump-relat­ed stress to thank (CNBC):

“Med­i­ta­tion start-up Calm was so suc­cess­ful dur­ing a chaot­ic and stress­ful 2017 that Apple rec­og­nized it as the app of the year.

“Well done, Calm,” Apple said in Decem­ber. Read the rest of this entry »

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Know Thy­self: Well-Being and Sub­jec­tive Expe­ri­ence (Cere­brum):

“Ancient Greek philoso­phers were fond of the apho­rism, “know thy­self,” inscribed above the entrance of one of the Tem­ples of Apol­lo at Del­phi. One expres­sion of this tra­di­tion, vari­ably attrib­uted to Socrates and Pla­to, is that “the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing.” Anoth­er, attrib­uted to Aris­to­tle, is “to know thy­self is the begin­ning of wis­dom.” And, accord­ing to Socrates, the path to such self-knowl­edge is through inner reflec­tion, or what we now call intro­spec­tion.

Thou­sands of years lat­er, pro­fes­sions arose to help peo­ple know them­selves bet­ter Read the rest of this entry »

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This car tech makes you a bet­ter dri­ver by read­ing your mind. We gave it a test dri­ve (The Wash­ing­ton Post):

“Might the car of the future be able to read your mind?

At CES, the big tech trade show, cars dom­i­nat­ed much of the con­ver­sa­tion. But one expe­ri­ence stood out because it was so far-out: I donned an exper­i­men­tal cap from Nis­san that inter­pret­ed sig­nals from my brain with the goal of mak­ing me a bet­ter dri­ver. Read the rest of this entry »

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Try adding 3 and 8 in your head.

That was easy. Now, try­ing adding 33 and 88. That was prob­a­bly more dif­fi­cult. Final­ly, try adding 333 and 888.

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Octo­ber e-newslet­ter, this time dis­cussing a range of research find­ings and tech­nolo­gies rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing brain and men­tal health.

New thinking about cognition, brain and mind:

• Study sug­gests the real deficit under­ly­ing Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­ders is not Atten­tion, but Work­ing Mem­o­ry (and this is why we asked you try adding 333 and 888…)
• Johns Hop­kins study shows how brain train­ing, if cor­rect­ly tar­get­ed, can enhance cog­ni­tive and brain per­for­mance
• We bet­ter train the mind as we train the body: with cross-train­ing and in good com­pa­ny

Emerging toolkit for brain health & enhancement:

• Next: Brain scans to iden­ti­fy chil­dren at high risk of devel­op­ing mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis (MS) before symp­toms appear
• Tran­scra­nial Direct Cur­rent Stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) can reduce fatigue in patients with Mul­ti­ple Scle­ro­sis (MS)
• Aus­tralian neu­rotech firm rais­es $4m to devel­op neu­ro­feed­back-based head­band aimed at help­ing kids with autism relax and bet­ter engage

News about the 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit (December 5–7th):

• Neu­ro­engi­neer­ing pio­neer Ran­dal Koene to dis­cuss neur­al inter­faces
• Meet 40 Experts and Inno­va­tors shap­ing Brain Health & Enhance­ment on Decem­ber 5–7th
• Reminder: the Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test is accept­ing sub­mis­sions until tomor­row Octo­ber 31st, 11 PM US Pacif­ic Stan­dard Time. We are look­ing for star­tups world­wide, found­ed no ear­li­er than 2012, for-prof­it or non-prof­it, work­ing on ways to har­ness brain research and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to help every per­son thrive in the dig­i­tal age.
• Check out the lat­est Agen­da & Reg­is­ter

And finally, a couple of fun brain teasers to start the week of the right foot:

• Which direc­tion is the bus going?
• The Emp­ty Tri­an­gle

Have a great month of Novem­ber!

The Sharp­Brains Team