(hat tip: Mind Hacks).

Please try this exper­i­ment, con­ceived by Simons and Chabris for their now clas­sic study, and now pack­aged in a nicer video pro­duc­tion. You will watch a brief video clip show­ing two teams, and your chal­lenge is to count the TOTAL num­ber of times that the bas­ket­balls change hands.

Click Here to view the Bas­ket­ball Exper­i­ment clip.

You can read about the fas­ci­nat­ing results here, and read the full study on sus­tained inat­ten­tional blind­ness (PDF).

Credit for pic: Haines World

Dri­ving as Next Brain Fit­ness Application? 

Last month, at the MIT/ Smart­Sil­vers event where we pre­sented our Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket Report, we dis­cussed what spe­cific appli­ca­tions, beyond the cur­rent empha­sis on healthy aging, might take com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing to a new level.  

Assess­ing and improv­ing dri­ving skills would be a top can­di­date, given both the well-defined nature of the need and the appear­ance of pro­grams with grow­ing evi­dence (both sci­en­tific and real-world) behind.

The New York Times Asks… 

Along these lines, the New York Times just published this arti­cle: Are You a Good Dri­ver? Here’s How to Find Out. A few quotes:

- “COULD a video game make you a bet­ter dri­ver? More impor­tant, could com­puter soft­ware pre­vent teenagers from mak­ing fatal mis­takes or even weed out older dri­vers whose debil­i­ties make them crash-prone?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Inter­ested a good, non-technical, sum­mary of the impli­ca­tions of recent brain sci­ence in our daily lives? Biol­o­gist John Med­ina offers that in his arti­cle below (as part of our Author Speaks Series) and in his new book: Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School. Enjoy!

(Note: John will be in the Bay Area on April 8 and 9th, speak­ing at Google and San Jose Rotary).

———————-

Brain Rules

– By John Medina

Go ahead and mul­ti­ply the num­ber 8,388,628 x 2 in your head. Can you do it in a few sec­onds? There is a young man who can dou­ble that num­ber 24 times in the space of a few sec­onds. He gets it right every time. There is a boy who can tell you the exact time of day at any moment, even in his sleep. There is a girl who can cor­rectly deter­mine the exact dimen­sions of an object 20 feet away. There is a child who at age 6 drew such life­like and pow­er­ful pic­tures, she got her own show at a gallery on Madi­son Avenue. Yet none of these chil­dren could be taught to tie their shoes. Indeed, none of them have an IQ greater than 50.

The brain is an amaz­ing thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Superb blog arti­cle by Newsweek’s Sharon Beg­ley: The Lotus and the Synapse, intro­duc­ing a new Study that shows com­pas­sion med­i­ta­tion changes the brain.

To read the orig­i­nal paper led by Richard David­son and Antoine Lutz, click Here. We will be cov­er­ing this in more detail next week.

An inter­est­ing recent arti­cle announcesPupils to start day with Nin­tendo Brain Train­ing(UK’s Daily Tele­graph). Some quotes:

- “Chil­dren at 16 pri­mary schools are to start each day by play­ing on a Nin­tendo games con­sole, it was dis­closed yesterday.”

- “The pupils will play “brain train­ing” exer­cises before lessons after a pilot scheme at a school in Dundee found that it boosted learn­ing ability.”

Read the rest of this entry »

As part of our ongo­ing Author Speaks Series, we are hon­ored to present today this excel­lent arti­cle by Dr. Shan­non Mof­fett, based on her illu­mi­nat­ing and engag­ing book. Enjoy!

(and please go to sleep soon if you are read­ing this late Mon­day night).
————

Two years ago I fin­ished a book on the mind/brain, called The Three Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock its Mys­ter­ies . Each chap­ter pro­files a leader in a dif­fer­ent aspect of mind/brain research, from neu­ro­surgery to zen Bud­dhism, from cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science to phi­los­o­phy of mind. One of my sub­jects was Dr. Robert Stick­gold, a zany, hyper-intelligent men­sch of a Har­vard sleep researcher. When I met him, I was in med­ical school and hav­ing a grand old time—I’d exacted an exten­sion of my tenure beyond the cus­tom­ary four years, so I had enough time to write the book, do my course­work, and have a life. I was busy, but still got enough sleep, had time to exer­cise daily, and even went for din­ner and a movie some­times. Although I found Stickgold’s work inter­est­ing, there was a part of me that just didn’t get it.

Fast-forward to the present, when I am a res­i­dent in emer­gency med­i­cine at a busy inner-city trauma cen­ter; I have two-year-old twins and a hus­band with a 60-hour-a-week job of his own. I do not exer­cise. I do not eat unless I can do some­thing else pro­duc­tive at the same time, and even when I do get to sleep in my own bed, my slum­ber is frac­tured by the awak­en­ings of two cir­ca­di­anly dis­parate tod­dlers. It seems to take me twice as long to “get” new con­cepts as it used to, and I never feel like I’m func­tion­ing at top speed. In short, I am a mess. And NOW I get what Stickgold’s work is all about, and under­stand that he is both quan­ti­fy­ing and explain­ing exactly what I’m feeling.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are proud to announce that Sharp­Brains has joined the soon-to-be-launched Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Part­ner Net­work. This won’t change any­thing in our day-to-day oper­a­tions.

Also, please visit us tomor­row Mon­day to read a superb arti­cle on Sleep and the Brain by Shan­non Mof­fett, author of the superb book The Three Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock its Mys­ter­ies. Mof­fett recently appeared on the PBS spe­cial The Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram, which aired nation­wide on PBS.

Have a nice Sunday!

A few recent acco­lades for our just released Mar­ket Report:

“An in-depth and cred­i­ble mar­ket research report that pro­vides an objec­tive view for investors and exec­u­tives look­ing for gam­ing and health oppor­tu­ni­ties in the grow­ing “brain train­ing” space. This report is a must-read to under­stand the state of the mar­ket, the play­ers, and key trends.“
– Daniel Gold­man, founder of Total Enter­tain­ment Net­work and for­mer exec­u­tive at Posit Sci­ence Corporation.

“This report is a must have for those in the brain health indus­try. Finally, an easy to use objec­tive resource orga­niz­ing the flurry of global brain health activ­i­ties. The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket report not only tells the story of cog­ni­tive train­ing and brain fit­ness, but pro­vides a broad range of data allow­ing one to more swiftly nav­i­gate the cur­rent ter­rain and future land­scape.“
– Debra Ray­bold, Direc­tor, Brain Health Cen­ter, Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal Health Sys­tem, South Bend, Indiana.

“This report is com­pre­hen­sive to say the least. It pro­vides an essen­tial ser­vice for long term care orga­ni­za­tions who want to pro­vide mind-enhancing pro­grams and ser­vices. There is a Read the rest of this entry »

What stresses you out ?

What­ever it is, how you respond to it may have more con­se­quences than you think. Let me show you how.

Recap­ping from last months arti­cle (see Stress and Neural Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­ity Puz­zle)…our bod­ies are a com­plex bal­anc­ing act between sys­tems work­ing full time to keep us alive and well. Any change which threat­ens this bal­ance can be referred to as stress. Cor­ti­sol, a key com­po­nent of the stress response, does an excel­lent job of allow­ing us to adapt to most stres­sors which last more than a cou­ple of min­utes. How­ever, hav­ing to endure a high stres­sor for longer than about 30 min­utes to an hour neg­a­tively impacts the brain in var­i­ous ways.

Read the rest of this entry »

Boost your visu­ospa­tial skills and learn about your brain
– By Dr. Pas­cale Michelon

Visu­ospa­tial skills are used every­day in many ways, rang­ing from going from one room to another in your house to solv­ing a jig­saw puz­zle and nav­i­gat­ing in a new city.

One spe­cific visu­ospa­tial skill has to do with mov­ing spa­tial infor­ma­tion around in your head. It is called men­tal rotation.

Let’s take an exam­ple. Can you pic­ture in your head an arrow point­ing to the right? Now, turn this arrow so it points to the left. Done?

Read the rest of this entry »