Brilliant Blog

Quick reminder: next Brain Fitness Blog Carnival will be hosted by MC at Neurophilosopher on March 19th (incidentally, Alvaro's birthday). Could you select 1-2 articles from your blog and email them to brainfitnesscarnival@sharpbrains.com or submit using the form at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_880.html by Friday?

Great March 19th issue of Newsweek Magazine, announcing the hiring of science writer Sharon Begley, who leads the cover story on The Evolution Revolution. You will find: The New Science of Human Evolution: "The new science of the brain and DNA is rewriting the history of human origins". Live Talk: Sharon Begley on the new science of evolution Think [...]

Scans showed that in only three months, the children’s brains developed three years, Yahoo! News reported. At the same time they displayed remarkable improvements in tests of reading, concentration, problem-solving and memory. One of the boys, who was hooked on television and despised reading turned his behaviour after the research. The boy got hooked up on reading and [...]

A quick tour around the blogosphere: Festival of Stocks #27 Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants Encephalon #18 Positive Thinking for the Week Ahead  Blog Carnival Roundup on the Iraq War Personal Development Carnival Writers from across the blogosphere Your ADD / ADHD News Carnival of Healing #76 ScienceBlogs Megite Science News: What's Happening Right Now happiness carnival   add/ adhd, blog carnivals, encephalon, happiness, healing, nonprofit, Personal Development, positive thinking, [...]

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation just contacted us to alert us of what looks like a fun concept: they are doing a major PR push to drive as many people as possible to do an online IQ test in their site, and they will compare averages accross cities, professions Tattoo Artists, Millionaires, Fitness Instructors, Surgeons, Mayors, [...]

A Spanish psychologist met with Cambodia’s “jungle woman” on Tuesday, hoping to unravel some of the mystery surrounding the woman who emerged from the forest, naked and unable to speak, after possibly 18 years in the wild. Hector Rifa, a doctor of psychology from Spain’s University of Oviedo, said his priority was to ensure the woman [...]

Adam Levine may have dumped Jessica Simpson electronically, but most regular folks are inclined to take a higher road when delivering bad news. That’s one of the findings of a new survey about the psychology of communicating. When it comes to breaking up with someone or surrendering other types of negative information, the vast majority of those [...]

Very interesting week: Awards: 1) MindFit 'Brain Gym' Software Receives 2007 Award Business and Aging Award by the American Society on Aging (ASA). "Most people neglect to exercise their brains as much as they should.  MindFit was created specifically for baby boomers and seniors as a fitness center for their minds," said Prof. Shlomo Breznitz, Ph.D., founder and president [...]

PZ Myers, the VV Cephei of science blogging, is 50 years old today. If you are interested in biology and evolution, give him the birthday present of a visit to Pharyngula! If you are wondering what VV Cephei means, and how poor mortals view PZ...please enjoy this short clip. (Thanks to Michelle for the lead to the video)  Biology, blog, Cephei, [...]

Children in low-quality childcare have less advanced language development that progresses at a slower rate than the language development of children in high-quality care despite having similar family environments, according to new researcher from the FPG Child Development Institute (FPG) and the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This new [...]

UCL (University College London) researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain’s attention on a subconscious level. The wider implication for the study, published in Current Biology, is that techniques such as subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but still legal in the USA, certainly do leave [...]

Today is International Women's Day 2007. Global consulting company Accenture organized a series of events, and I was fortunate to lead a fun workshop on The Neuroscience of Stress and Stress Management in their San Francisco office, helping over 125 accomplished women (and a few men) learn what stress is, its implications for our brain functioning, performance and [...]

When is Brain Awareness Week? March 12-18, 2007 What Will Happen The Brain Awareness Week is a great opportunity to learn more about how the brain functions and how to cultivate a healthy brain. The Dana Foundation and multiple partners, such as SharpBrains, will lead outreach events worldwide. In the blog of the Dana Foundation we can read today [...]

Brett N. Steenbarger , Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University, active trader for over 30 years, former Director of Trader Development for Kingstree Trading, LLC, author of The Psychology of Trading and the new Enhancing Trader Performance, and of the blog TraderFeed: Exploiting the edge from historical market [...]

We wrote yesterday about Growing Super Athletes (each of our students) and how "Learning" goes beyond what we typically call "Education". One of the skills needed for success at school and life is emotional self-regulation, and a recent article on SharpBrains in La Opinion (main US-based Spanish-language newspaper) touched precisely on that. Below you have the link, and quotes, [...]

(Thanks for the lead, Tom!)  David Brooks writes a great column (requires subscription) in the NYT titled A Critique of Pure Reason. He expands the usual restricted understanding of "education" to incorporate a wider sense of "learning", by discussing  1. Where "The creative ones (politicians) will finally absorb the truth found in decades of research: the relationships children have outside school [...]

You probably have seen the news about Bob Woodruff's own recovery and his articles now to raise awareness about the plight of Iraq veterans.In the article A Firsthand Report on the Wounds of War we learn how "Woodruff, 45, is launching a multimedia campaign that includes appearances Tuesday with Oprah Winfrey and on "Good Morning America," and the release of a book (" In an Instant") written with his wife, Lee, about their ordeal.""Woodruff's reporting packs an emotional punch because he is, quite simply, a man who cheated death.... discusses what a great work the military is doing to prevent deaths of injured soldiers in Iraq-with the unintended consequence that rehabilitation services back in the US are completely overwhelmed.Neurophilosopher puts this problem in a wider context with DoD is neglecting troops' mental health.For a better prespective, this is a quote from our interview with Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg on Cognitive Training, talking about the birth of modern neuropsychology during World War II:"Of course there weren't advanced neuroimaging techniques those days, so scientists could only speculate about what happened in healthy brains.

Here is question 19 of 25 from Brain Fitness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:How can I improve my concentration and my memory?Key Points: Attention is among the most important components of our mental life.Reduce your stress to improve concentration and reduce distractions.Focus, take breaks, and elaborate in order to remember.Answer:Attention is among the most important components of your mental life. By choosing to attend to something and focus on it, you create a personal interaction with it, which gives it personal meaning, making it easier to remember.Focus.Separate.Elaborate.

"How does this neuro frontier inside our skulls specifically inform law firm management? By peering inside the brain, we can see how its owner takes in information, makes decisions, changes and resists change, remembers and recalls, and responds to people. What we are learning about the brain affects three factors critical to law firms and [...]