Brilliant Blog

If you missed Part 1, also written by puzzle master Wes Carroll, you can start there and then come back here to Part 2. Concentric Shapes: The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 2 of 2.Difficulty: HARDER Type: MATH (Spatial)Question:Imagine a square within a circle within a square.The circle just grazes each square at exactly four points.Find the ratio of the area of the larger square to the smaller.In this puzzle you are working out many of the same skills as in Part I: spatial visualization (occipital lobes), memory (temporal lobes), logic (frontal lobes), planning (frontal lobes), and hypothesis generation (frontal lobes).Click to read the Solution and Explanation.

Here are some of the blog carnivals (collections of blog posts around specific topics) where we have added our Brain Fitness perspective during the last few days: Health Wonk Review Brain Blogging Career Intensity Abundance Mindset   Empowering Links Personal Development Healing Long Term Investing Small Business Issues Learning in the Great Outdoors Exercise and weight loss programs Personal Development blog, brain, Exercise, health, Personal Development

The NYT Magazine today is devoted to the topic of Can Science Tell us Who Grows Wiser. It may have been even better had the question been, "What Science Tells us About How we Can Grow Wiser", but it is a pretty good issue anyway. A very good article on The Older–and–Wiser Hypothesis. Quotes:  One of the most interesting [...]

Notre Dame Professor Bradley Gibson, whom we interviewed a few months ago (see below) presented the results from his study recently at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD): University of Notre Dame Professor and Research Team are First in U.S. to Validate Breakthrough Study on  the Effectiveness of Working Memory Training in Improving Attention [...]

This is a very fun link to a series of 20 timed puzzles put together by the BBC. It should take you about 10 minutes or less to complete. The Senses Challenge You also might enjoy their Interactive Brain which allows you to explore both the structure and function of your brain. The functions will help you [...]

Stephanie, our lawyer-blogger friend, alerted us of 2 great articles co-authored by her and Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at the School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles and one of the world’s leading experts in neuroplasticity.    We highly recommend them for lawyers, business professionals, and leaders in general.     I. A Blueprint For Self-leadership (or [...]

If you are based in the Bay Area, we hope to see you at this event! Below you have the invitation that our partners and us are starting to circulate. Feel free to forward to anyone you know who may be interested. ---------------------------------------- The growing movement for improving brain health has brought many interested professionals and interested community members [...]

My first full-time job was as a strategic consultant at McKinsey & Company. A very intense 2-year learning experience. Their Alumni News Service recently interviewed me and published this great article on SharpBrains. The writer does a superb job of providing an overview of what we do, so I recommend you read it. I'd like to emphasize [...]

improve our Technorati rank? we are very close to having 300 blogs linking to our site/ blog, and a ranking better than 12,000! Technorati Rank: 12,047 (3,376 links from 297 blogs) We would love your help in crossing that number! No matter how big or small your blog is, every link counts. What can you link to? Well, we [...]