Brain Exercise: Software vs. Crosswords

By Alvaro Fernandez | May 6, 2008 |

Today I had a great con­ver­sa­tion with Mar­tin Buschkuehl, one of the U Michi­gan researchers involved in the cog­ni­tive train­ing study that has received much media atten­tion since ear­ly last week, when the study was pub­lished at the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. I will pub­lish the inter­view notes next week. For the…

Read More

Brain News: Software, Education, Arts

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 5, 2008 |

A few updates and announce­ments: — 1) My apolo­gies for slow blog­ging, due to trav­el. I par­tic­i­pat­ed yes­ter­day in a fun pan­el dis­cus­sion at ETech on Use Your Head- The Future of Mind Hacks. You can read some take-aways (in Ital­ian, so this may be good brain exer­cise) here. — 2) We will release our…

Read More

Placebo effect: why not more of it?

By Alvaro Fernandez | May 26, 2007

Senia writes a great arti­cle on How You Tell the Sto­ry of Your Life in Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy News Dai­ly. As part of the sto­ry, she men­tions a very fun study on the pow­er of the Place­bo effect. From Seni­a’s post: “In the Feb­ru­ary, 2007 issue of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, Langer and col­league Alia Crum report­ed that they…

Read More