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When writ­ing a song or a piece of prose, I often choose to let my mind wan­der, hop­ing the muse will strike. If it does, it not only moves my work along but feels great, too!

That’s why I was trou­bled by stud­ies that found an asso­ci­a­tion between mind-wan­der­ing and prob­lems like unhap­pi­ness and depression—and even a short­er life expectan­cy. This research sug­gests that focus­ing one’s thoughts on the present moment is linked to well-being, while spac­ing out—which I per­son­al­ly love to do—is not.

Now, new stud­ies are bring­ing nuance to this sci­ence. Read the rest of this entry »

Top Brain­no­va­tion to boost Work­place Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Resilience (record­ing requires reg­is­tra­tion; view slid­edeck Here). The three Final­ists were:

• Beam Rid­ers – pitch by Jafar Sab­bah, Founder & CEO
• MyCog­ni­tion – pitch by Mar­ti­na Rat­to, Cog­ni­tive Sci­en­tist
• The Touch­point Solu­tion (WINNER) – pitch by Dr. Amy Serin, Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist & Co-Founder

• Judged by: Ariel Garten, Founder and Chief Evan­ge­lism Offi­cer at Inter­aX­on; Char­lie Hartwell, Oper­at­ing Part­ner at Bridge Builders Col­lab­o­ra­tive; Kath­leen Herath, Asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dent Health & Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at Nation­wide Insur­ance; Lisa Neu­berg­er, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Strat­e­gy + Inno­va­tion at Accen­ture Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship

Slid­edeck sup­port­ing ses­sion held dur­ing the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Health & Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th). All ses­sion record­ings avail­able for pur­chase (50+ Speak­ers, 15+ Hours, $150).

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Quick heads-up:  The 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit start­ing tomor­row Tues­day, Decem­ber 5th will host a Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test to dis­cuss the lat­est tech­nolo­gies for Brain Health & Enhance­ment, and 12 select­ed star­tups will get to pitch their inno­v­a­tive approach and solu­tions to our dis­tin­guished Judges –our very own “Sharp Tank”– and to all Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants. Read the rest of this entry »

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In 2009, Winifred Gal­lagher pub­lished his excel­lent Rapt: Atten­tion and the Focused Life, per­sua­sive­ly argu­ing that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, enjoy­ment and human devel­op­ment require extend­ed peri­ods of focus­ing.

The next year, Nicholas Carr pub­lished his fas­ci­nat­ing The Shal­lows: What the Inter­net Is Doing to Our Brains in which he argued that the Inter­net is ‘rewiring’ our brains. While his claim was exag­ger­at­ed, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and the Inter­net cer­tain­ly pro­vide chal­lenges to Read the rest of this entry »

[Pho­to: Flickr user_DJ_, Bri­an Snel­son via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons]

This Out­dat­ed Approach To Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Is Bad For Your Brain (Fast Com­pa­ny):

“Your car has parts that per­form spe­cif­ic tasks. The radi­a­tor cools the engine. The spark plugs ignite the gas. The intake man­i­fold dis­trib­utes air and gas even­ly to the cylin­ders. We think of a car this way because a car is a machine.

For most of the 20th cen­tu­ry, sci­en­tists mapped the brain in the same way Read the rest of this entry »