Are Schools (Cognitively) Nutritive for Children’s Complex Thinking?

Today we host a very stim­u­lat­ing essay on the impor­tance of prob­lem-solv­ing and encour­ag­ing com­plex game-play­ing for chil­dren’s com­plete “cog­ni­tive nutri­tion”. Enjoy! ——————– Chil­dren’s Com­plex Think­ing – By Tom O’Brien and Chris­tine Wal­lach Pop over to your neigh­bor­hood school and vis­it some class­rooms. Is what’s hap­pen­ing cog­ni­tive­ly nutri­tive? That is, does it sat­is­fy present needs…

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Cognitive Fitness as a New Frontier of Fitness

Very good arti­cle in the LA Times today. Like a Stair­Mas­ter for the brain: Can men­tal work­outs improve the mind’s agili­ty? Baby boomer con­cerns stim­u­late an indus­try expan­sion. The reporter, Melis­sa Healy, reviews the healthy aging seg­ment in the Brain Fit­ness field. A few select­ed quotes: — “There is plau­si­bil­i­ty, both bio­log­i­cal and behav­ioral, to…

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Brains Way Smarter Than Ours (and yours, probably)

Roundup of recent arti­cles: 1) Awards ‑Very smart brains: Fun Slate arti­cle, Sev­en Inge­nious Rules: How to become a MacArthur genius, once the 24 new MacArthur Fel­lows were announced (Dear read­er: if you are a past, present or future win­ner, please for­give me for the title). ‑The Tech Muse­um of Inno­va­tion Announces 2007 Awards (we had…

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Cells that fire together wire together” and Stanford Media X

That is the goal of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Media X: to fos­ter deep col­lab­o­ra­tions between indus­try and acad­e­mia, as high­light­ed in Busi­ness Week’s recent arti­cle The Vir­tu­al Meet­ing Room. The 5th Annu­al Media X Con­fer­ence on Research, Col­lab­o­ra­tion, Inno­va­tion and Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty served its pur­pose well for the last cou­ple of days: very fun and insight­ful presentations…

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