psychology-teaching

Musical training as mental exercise for cognitive performance

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We often hear (glad­ly!) how teach­ers use our blog arti­cles and brain teasers in their class­es. We also hear how many psy­chol­o­gy and biol­o­gy teach­ers are get­ting their stu­dents excit­ed about brain research, and, to con­tribute to their efforts, we like to rec­og­nize some great initiatives.

Last year, Jef­frey Gonce, a Psy­chol­o­gy teacher at Red Land High School (West Shore School Dis­trict, PA) asked his stu­dents to “com­plete a project describ­ing a recent brain (or genet­ic) study that affects behav­ior.” The stu­dents could opt to post their arti­cles online, and Jef­frey was kind enough to send us a link to read the results. We enjoyed read­ing them all, and pub­lished in our blog this beau­ti­ful essay, titled “Tis bet­ter to give than receive”, writ­ten by Alexan­dra, which Piano musical training was sub­se­quent­ly includ­ed in a num­ber of neu­ro­science an psy­chol­o­gy blogs.

This year, Jef­frey also sent us his stu­dents’ essays, and we are going to rec­og­nize and pub­lish this great essay by high school stu­dent Megan. Enjoy!
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It has long been the source of sci­en­tif­ic debate as to whether music can improve the cog­ni­tive process­es in chil­dren. Referred to by some as “The Mozart Effect,” a strong [Read more…] about Musi­cal train­ing as men­tal exer­cise for cog­ni­tive performance

Bill Clinton on health care and wellness

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We read a good arti­cle on med­ical salaries recent­ly, and are hap­py to see an increased empha­sis pre­ven­tion and well­ness rather than on sickness.

Along these lines, we were for­tu­nate to attend Heal­thetc yes­ter­day, a day-long health event in San Fran­cis­co co-orga­nized by KCBS and CPMC that had Bill Clin­ton as keynote speak­er. You can read an arti­cle on his great inter­ven­tion here.

Some of the speech highlights:

1) Clin­ton’s great overview of key data:

  • 16 vs 10–11: % GDP spent on health care in the US vs. oth­er indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries. This per­cent­age dif­fer­ence equals around $800 bil­lion annually
  • 84 vs 100: % pop­u­la­tion with some form of health insur­ance in the US vs. oth­er countries
  • 34 and 37: rank­ing of the US sys­tem as mea­sured by health out­comes and life expectan­cy, respectively
  • 34 vs 19: % health care costs spent on admin­is­tra­tion in the US vs. oth­er countries

2) He out­lined the 3 main prob­lems with US Health­care as fol­lows-and empathized that any seri­ous, long-term solu­tion needs to [Read more…] about Bill Clin­ton on health care and wellness