social-skills

Debate: What are the ethics of discouraging much-needed innovation given potential privacy concerns?

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CNN’s Ana Maria Mon­tero inter­views Ned Sahin. The dis­cus­sion about the impact of EU pri­va­cy laws starts in minute 10.

Sto­ry descrip­tion (CNN Mon­ey): Ned Sahin is founder and CEO of neu­rotech­nol­o­gy start-up Brain Pow­er, whose tool “Empow­er Me” uses smart glass­es like Google Glass to coach those with autism. It helps school­child­ren learn social and cog­ni­tive skills and can even guide adults through an inter­view process. Brain Power’s prod­uct is sold to many schools in the U.S. but may nev­er make it to mar­ket in Switzer­land [Read more…] about Debate: What are the ethics of dis­cour­ag­ing much-need­ed inno­va­tion giv­en poten­tial pri­va­cy concerns?

Challenging status quo: Why shouldn’t behavioral therapy, instead of medication, be first-line treatment for ADHD?

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ADHD-BehavioralTherapy
— Par­tic­i­pants at a social skills train­ing camp. Source: Flori­da Inter­na­tion­al University

Behav­ioral Ther­a­py First for ADHD Treat­ment? (Web­MD):

“Behav­ioral ther­a­py should be used before med­ica­tion in treat­ing chil­dren with atten­tion-deficit hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (ADHD), accord­ing to new research. [Read more…] about Chal­leng­ing sta­tus quo: Why shouldn’t behav­ioral ther­a­py, instead of med­ica­tion, be first-line treat­ment for ADHD?

Brain teasers to understand and boost cognitive abilities

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brain circuitsFirst of all, what is cog­ni­tion? Cog­ni­tion has to do with how a per­son under­stands and acts in the world. It is a set of men­tal process­es that are part of near­ly every human action. For instance, answer­ing the tele­phone involves per­cep­tion (hear­ing the ring tone), deci­sion tak­ing (answer­ing or not), motor skill (lift­ing the receiv­er), lan­guage skills (lis­ten­ing and talk­ing), social skills (inter­pret­ing tone of voice and inter­act­ing properly).

Cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties are sup­port­ed by spe­cific neu­ronal net­works and brain struc­tures. For instance mem­ory skills rely main­ly on parts of the tem­po­ral lobes and parts of the frontal lobes (behind the fore­head). In the arti­cle What are Cog­ni­tive Abil­i­ties and Skills? you can find good expla­na­tion and exam­ples, togeth­er with stim­u­lat­ing brain teasers to exer­cise the cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties described. Learn, and have fun!

 

The Business and Ethics of the Brain Fitness Boom — Part 4: The Future

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Build­ing Blocks for a Bet­ter Future

The best alter­na­tive for tomor­row should be bet­ter than the best alter­na­tive avail­able today. How do we get there, when “cog­ni­tion” and “brain fit­ness” remain elu­sive con­cepts in pop­u­lar cul­ture? I believe that the lack of pub­lic edu­ca­tion is the major obsta­cle that lim­its the brain fit­ness field’s poten­tial to deliv­er real-world ben­e­fits, since only informed demand will ensure the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of ratio­nal, struc­tured “rules of the road.” What could be done to address this and oth­er par­tic­u­lar obsta­cles? [Read more…] about The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom — Part 4: The Future

The Business and Ethics of the Brain Fitness Boom — Part 3: The Real Need

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Engag­ing peo­ple where they are in the life-course

Eighty per­cent of the 38,000 adults over age 50 who were respon­ders in the 2010 AARP Mem­ber Opin­ion Sur­vey indi­cat­ed “stay­ing men­tal­ly sharp” was their top ranked inter­est and con­cern (Dinger, 2010). What exact­ly does this phrase mean? And what role can tech­nol­o­gy play in “stay­ing men­tal­ly sharp”? Intel CEO Paul Otelli­ni has said, “You have to start by think­ing about what peo­ple want to do… and work back­ward.” [Read more…] about The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom — Part 3: The Real Need

The Business and Ethics of the Brain Fitness Boom — Part 2: The Ethics

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The ter­mi­nol­o­gy “fun­da­men­tal attri­bu­tion error” describes the ten­den­cy to over­val­ue per­son­al­i­ty-based expla­na­tions for observed human behav­iors, while under­valu­ing sit­u­a­tion­al expla­na­tions for those behav­iors.  I believe that a pri­ma­ry rea­son behind many per­ceived and real eth­i­cal chal­lenges in the brain fit­ness field is due not so much to cer­tain stake­hold­ers’ lack of per­son­al or pro­fes­sion­al ethics, but derives from the flawed soci­etal con­struct that under­pins cur­rent, rel­e­vant inno­va­tions. To improve the ethics of the brain fit­ness busi­ness and its appli­ca­tion (and empow­er con­sumers’ informed deci­sion mak­ing), there must first be agree­ment about a mean­ing­ful, appro­pri­ate way to ana­lyze and guide inno­va­tion. This is the crux of the prob­lem. The cur­rent med­ical mod­el is not up to the task at hand, since it is heav­i­ly skewed toward inva­sive drugs and devices dri­ven by dis­ease-based mod­els, and fails to lever­age [Read more…] about The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom — Part 2: The Ethics