Fig­ure 3. Weight Loss at Month 1 Cor­re­lat­ed with Changes in BOLD in Regions Asso­ci­at­ed with Cog­ni­tive Con­trol. Cred­it: Selin Neselil­er et al

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New research sug­gests that high­er-lev­el brain func­tions have a major role in los­ing weight. In a study among 24 par­tic­i­pants at a weight-loss clin­ic, those who achieved great­est suc­cess in terms of weight loss demon­strat­ed more activ­i­ty in the brain regions of the lat­er­al pre­frontal cor­tex asso­ci­at­ed with self-con­trol. Read the rest of this entry »

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Social-emo­tion­al learn­ing (SEL) teach­es the key atti­tudes and skills nec­es­sary for under­stand­ing and man­ag­ing emo­tions, lis­ten­ing, feel­ing and show­ing empa­thy for oth­ers, and mak­ing thought­ful, respon­si­ble deci­sions. For five years, I was an edu­ca­tor in the field teach­ing mind­ful­ness and emo­tion­al skills to teenagers at six dif­fer­ent high schools.

Over and over, I saw the pow­er of mind­ful­ness to trans­form the inner lives of stu­dents. Stu­dents became less stressed, more self-reg­u­lat­ed, and more thought­ful toward their class­mates. But I also saw that Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a fun and inter­ac­tive ver­sion of the famous Stroop test, often used in neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to mea­sure response inhi­bi­tion and cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­ity. Per­form­ing well on the test requires strong con­cen­tra­tion and self-reg­u­la­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

–Richard David­son at the Mind­ful­ness & Well-Being at Work con­fer­ence on Novem­ber 13–14, 2015, in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia. Pho­to: Auey San­tos

There’s a back­lash brew­ing against mind­ful­ness at work.

“Cor­po­ra­tions have jumped on the mind­ful­ness band­wag­on because it con­ve­nient­ly shifts the bur­den onto the indi­vid­ual employ­ee,” write Ron Purs­er and David Loy in the Huff­in­g­ton Post. “Stress is framed as a per­son­al prob­lem, and mind­ful­ness is offered as just the right med­i­cine to help employ­ees work more effi­cient­ly and calm­ly with­in tox­ic envi­ron­ments.” Read the rest of this entry »

My col­league Dr. Murali Doraiswamy just wrote an excel­lent opin­ion piece for The New York Times: With Age Comes Wis­dom, and Some Con­cerns For Can­di­dates.

He ends it up say­ing that, “As Hen­ry Ford not­ed, “Any­one who stops learn­ing is old, whether at 20 or 80. Any­one who keeps learn­ing stays young.” We should shift the debate away from wor­ry­ing about the age of our can­di­dates and focus instead on their cog­ni­tive skill set and prac­ti­cal wis­dom.”

I couldn’t agree more with those wise words.

But, I do dis­agree with the words just pre­ced­ing them: “War­ren Buf­fett, at the age of 85, would still be a high­ly viable can­di­date, should he choose to run.”

To see why I disagree–and why it matters–let me syn­the­size some recent research on brain health, cog­ni­tion and aging. Read the rest of this entry »