Rationality doesn’t equal efficiency: Cellphone data shows how we navigate cities

Think of your morn­ing walk to work, school or your favorite cof­fee shop. Are you tak­ing the short­est pos­si­ble route to your des­ti­na­tion? Accord­ing to big data research that my col­leagues and I con­duct­ed, the answer is no: People’s brains are not wired for opti­mal nav­i­ga­tion. Instead of cal­cu­lat­ing the short­est path, peo­ple try to…

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Brain training 2.0: Adding 3D Navigation to Optimize Cognitive Training

As dis­cussed dur­ing my Sharp­Brains Sum­mit talk last week, it is very impor­tant to ensure fideli­ty between brain train­ing tasks and the real-world sce­nar­ios where we expect those sharp­ened cog­ni­tive skills to be put to good use. That’s why, work­ing with a num­ber of researchers in the US and Europe, I’ve been devel­op­ing a new…

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