staff-turnover

Learning & The Brain: Interview with Robert Sylwester

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Robert SylwesterDr. Robert Syl­west­er is an edu­ca­tor of edu­ca­tors, hav­ing received mul­ti­ple awards dur­ing his long career as a mas­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tor of the impli­ca­tions of brain sci­ence research for edu­ca­tion and learn­ing. He is the author of sev­er­al books and many jour­nal arti­cles, and mem­ber of our Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­so­ry Board. His most recent book is The Ado­les­cent Brain: Reach­ing for Auton­o­my (Cor­win Press, 2007). He is an Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oregon.

I am hon­ored to inter­view him today.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Let’s start with that eter­nal source of debate. What do we know about the respec­tive roles of genes and our envi­ron­ment in brain devel­op­ment?

Robert Syl­west­er: Genet­ic and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors both con­tribute to brain mat­u­ra­tion. Genet­ics prob­a­bly play a stronger role in the ear­ly years, and the envi­ron­ment plays a stronger role in lat­er years. Still the moth­er’s (envi­ron­men­tal) use of drugs dur­ing the preg­nan­cy could affect the genet­ics of fetal brain devel­op­ment, and some adult ill­ness­es, such as Hunt­ing­ton’s Dis­ease, are genet­i­cal­ly triggered.

Nature and nur­ture both require the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions of the oth­er in most devel­op­men­tal and main­te­nance func­tions. We typ­i­cal­ly think of envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors as things that hap­pen to us, over which we have lit­tle control.

Can’t our own deci­sions have an effect in our own brain devel­op­ment? For exam­ple, what if I choose a career in invest­ment bank­ing, vs. one in jour­nal­ism or teaching?

We make our own career deci­sions in life, and most of us make a com­bi­na­tion of good and bad deci­sions, which influ­ence our brain’s maturation.

My father was very unusu­al in his career tra­jec­to­ry in that he worked at one place through­out his entire adult life, and died three months after he retired at 91. I’ve always thought that it’s a good idea to make a change every ten years or so and do some­thing dif­fer­ent either with­in the same orga­ni­za­tion or to move to anoth­er one.

It’s just as good for orga­ni­za­tions to have some staff turnover as it is for staff to move to new chal­lenges. The time to leave one posi­tion for anoth­er is while you and your employ­er are [Read more…] about Learn­ing & The Brain: Inter­view with Robert Sylwester

Rethinking the Brain Fitness Business

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Great arti­cle on the grow­ing brain fit­ness field. Rethink­ing the Brain Busi­ness: Why a men­tal-fit­ness pro­gram may be the start of some­thing big. Some quotes:

- “But Merzenich has lofti­er ambi­tions. He envi­sions his com­pa­ny as part of a new indus­try that will become a “mir­ror” of the drug indus­try. He wants to go far beyond sim­ply sharp­en­ing mem­o­ry and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty to tack­le dis­eases as well. Instead of med­ica­tions, he sees a busi­ness root­ed in neu­ro­science that will use non­in­va­sive com­put­er exer­cis­es to rewire the brain, grad­u­al­ly train­ing it back to men­tal health.”

- For now, Merzenich believes the emerg­ing field of “brain health” is clut­tered with bad sci­ence. He sin­gled out Nin­ten­do’s brain games as an exam­ple of a prod­uct that has no sci­ence to back up its claims. But he does­n’t expect that to last.

- “This field is undis­ci­plined now and full of trash,” he says. “But it will mature and ulti­mate­ly the snake oil will be cleaned up. It will grow like the fit­ness indus­try from almost nowhere. And it will become a part of every­day life.”

For help on how to eval­u­ate the grow­ing num­ber of pro­grams, check out our Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram eval­u­a­tion check­list.

Training the Brains of Fighter Pilots and Basketball Players

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We are a brain fit­ness cen­ter because we want to offer the best infor­ma­tion, tools and sup­port on how to exer­cise our brains. Same way you join the gym to stay in shape and find the best machines and per­son­al trainers.

One of the “tools” or “machines” we offer was designed under the sci­en­tif­ic super­vi­sion of Pro­fes­sor Daniel Gopher and his team for bas­ket­ball play­ers: click here to read our inter­view with him. And here for a fun clip with the Mem­phis Tigers.

Our part­ner ACE just issued this press release:

Fight­er Pilots Help Pur­due and Long Beach State Reach the Tournament

The Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym Improves Decision-Making

STUDIO CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The same tech­nol­o­gy ini­tial­ly devel­oped to train Israeli fight­er pilots on the cog­ni­tive, brain lev­el has been an inte­gral part of the train­ing reg­i­men for both Long Beach State and Pur­due, two teams earn­ing their first NCAA tour­na­ment births since 1995 and 2003 respectively.

The inno­v­a­tive Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym soft­ware pro­gram has been proven to improve real-time deci­sion-mak­ing and exe­cu­tion for thou­sands of bas­ket­ball play­ers world­wide and play­ers on more than a dozen col­lege bas­ket­ball teams. [Read more…] about Train­ing the Brains of Fight­er Pilots and Bas­ket­ball Players