"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 to each individual lawyer: control, communication, and competence. Let’s take a tour of some of what’s been learned and see how the new information can be useful."
This is part of the great article that Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Stephanie West Allen have written for the February, 2007 edition of Of Counsel: The Legal Practice and Management Report, titled "Brain Management: Law Firm Leadership on the Neuro Frontier" (Not available online.)
You can read a bit more in Stephanie's blog (a must-read blog for lawyers).
In short: our actions can change our brains. Actually, our thoughts can do so too. We all can benefit from "self-directed neuroplasticity"-which requires practice, imagination and empathy. The article mentions specific examples for lawyers.
Learning assumes and induces neuroplasticity (how the brain changes).
How can you apply this to your occupation? what have you learned today?
You can read more on a similar topic, by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz and David Rock: check out The Neuroscience of Leadership.
We finally had time to hear and enjoy the 35-minute interview with WSJ science writer Sharon Begley about her new book, Train Your Mind Change Your Brain. Highly recommended. (Thanks Beate!)
NPR Talk of the Nation, February 2, 2007: "For years, scientists believed the brain's structure couldn't be changed. The new science of neuroplasticity says that's not the case, and argue the brain is much more flexible than previously thought."
Listen to the interview here.
Alvaro and I had the good fortune to attend a great conference last week called Learning & The Brain: Enhancing Cognition and Emotions for Learning. It was a fascinating mix of neuroscientists and educators talking with and listening to each other. Some topics were meant to be applied today, but many were food for thought - insight on where science and education are headed and how they influence each other.
Using dramatic new imaging techniques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neuroscientists are gaining valuable information about learning. This pioneering knowledge is leading not only to new pedagogies, but also to new medications, brain enhancement technologies, and therapies.... The Conference creates an interdisciplinary forum — a meeting place for neuroscientists, educators, psychologists, clinicians, and parents — to examine these new research findings with respect to their applicability in the classroom and clinical practice.
Take-aways
- Humans are a mixture of cognition and emotion, and both elements are essential to function and learn properly
- Educators and public policy makers need to learn more about the brain, how it grows, and how to cultivate it
- Students of all ages need to be both challenged and nurtured in order to succeed
- People learn differently - try to teach and learn through as many different modalities as possible (engage language, motor skills, artistic creation, social interaction, sensory input, etc.)
- While short-term stress can heighten your cognitive abilities, long term stress kills you — you need to find balance and release
- Test anxiety and subsequent poor test results can be improved with behavioral training with feedback based on heart rate variability
- Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a very very enlightening and fun speaker
- Allow time for rest and consolidation of learned material
- Emotional memories are easier to remember
- Conferences like these perform a real service in fostering dialogues between scientists and educators
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We have explained before how mental stimulation is important if done in the right supportive and engaging environment. Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky and others have shown that chronic stress and cortical inhibition, which may be aggravated due to imposed mental stimulation, may prove counterproductive. Having the right motivation is essential.
A promising area of scientific inquiry for stress management is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). You may have read about it in Sharon Begley's Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain book. An increasing number of neuroscientists (such as UMass Medical School’s Jon Kabat-Zinn and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Richard Davidson) have been investigating the ability of trained meditators to develop and sustain attention and visualizations and to work positively with powerful emotional states and stress through the directed mental processes of meditation practices. And have put their research into practice for the benefit of many hospital patients through their MSBR programs.
A Stanford psychologist and friend recently alerted me to a similar program organized Continue Reading »
We are offering a limited-time deal for the rest of February 2007.
You will get 
Brain Fitness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions included for free! (an $11.95 savings!)
Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg and Alvaro Fernandez answer in plain English the most common questions around why and how to exercise our brains.
...when you buy any of the following brain exercise programs:
Exercise Your Brain: New Brain Research and Implications DVD
This one-hour and 20 minute class introduces you to the science of brain fitness and includes many engaging brain exercises you can do on your own or in a group setting. You will learn about basic neuroanatomy and physiology, as well as hear about the groundbreaking publications that launched this field. Then, get you will practice how to exercise your own brain and flex all your mental muscles. Perfect introduction to Brain Fitness!
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Here is question 18 of 25 from Brain Fitness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.
Question:
Is physical fitness important to your brain fitness?
Key Points:
- Exercise improves learning through increased blood supply and growth hormones.
- Exercise is an anti-depressant by reducing stress and promoting neurogenesis.
- Exercise protects the brain from damage and disease, as well as speeding the recovery.
- Exercise benefits you the most when you start young.
Answer:
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Interesting commentary on Entrepreneurs and Math Anxiety
Based on a research report that included
- "Math anxiety — feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math — can sap the brain’s limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems, said Mark Ashcroft, a psychologist at the University of Nevada Los Vegas who studies the problem."
- “It turns out that math anxiety occupies a person’s working memory,” said Ashcroft, who spoke on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco."
You can learn more here about Brain Fitness Programs for Students to help them manage anxiety and also train working memory.
In which direction is the bus pictured below traveling?
Do you know the answer?
The only possible answers are "left" or "right."
Still don't know?
Keep reading for the answer and explanation...
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Here is question 17 of 25 from Brain Fitness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.
Question:
Are there herbal and vitamin supplements that will protect my memory?
Key Points:
- Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids found in cold-water fish may be helpful to long term brain health.
- Folic acid may also be helpful to both cognitive function and hearing.
- Ginkgo biloba and DHEA do not appear to help your brain.
- There is still more research to be done and never dismiss the placebo effect!
Answer:
Continue Reading »
Several recent stories on brain training and SharpBrains:
1) New brain games may improve mind fitness by Kevin Kosterman (U of Wisconsin Oshkosh's Advance-Titan)
"Anytime we learn, we are training, changing, our brain," Fernandez said. "The three key core elements for effective brain exercise are novelty, variety and constant challenge, similar to increasing the level in machines we find in gyms."
2) "Training the Brain as possible as Training the Body", جريدة النهار by Hanadi El Diri (Annahar, one of the most prestigious papers in the Middle East. The text is in Arabic.)
3) "Train your brain" by Mark Muckenfuss (The Press-Enterprise in Riverside and San Bernardino)
"We cannot promise to people you will only keep getting better until you are 200 years old. But I think people still underestimate how flexible the brain really is."
The SmartBrains [sic] program combines mental exercises with a stress reduction program. Too much stress, says Fernandez, has been shown to be damaging not only to performance, but to the brain itself.
With all of the available programs for stimulating the brain, he says, it is important to shop carefully. A critical element, he says, is how clients or participants are evaluated.
"Make sure they have a credible assessment that helps you find your strengths and weaknesses and that they have programs that address (those areas)," he says. "Assessments that give you 50 (as an age-equivalent grade) and a week later you're 32, that's not a valuable assessment."
