Welcome to the 70th edition of Encephalon, the blog carnival that offers some of the best neuroscience and psychology blog posts every other week.

—

Mysteries of Brain and Mind

—

On Neurons, Journeys, and Chemical Friends

—

On Brain Functions

—

Frontiers in Perception

—

Next edition will be hosted by Neuroanthropology on Monday, May 25th. If you can’t wait until to read more, you may be interested in the new in-depth feature, Cognitive Monthly, offered by Cognitive Daily blog for $2/ month. This month’s issue, “The Illusion of Theater,” discusses the “remarkable science behind what theatrical professionals seem, to laypeople, to do intuitively: create an environment that encourages us to believe that what we see on stage is a true representation of reality.”

Today we’ll discuss some of the cognitive implications of “always on” workplaces and lifestyles via a fascinating interview with Maggie Jackson, an award-winning author and journalist. Her latest book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, describes the implications of our busy work and life environments and offers important reflections to help us thrive in them.

This is a 2-part interview conducted via e-mail: we will publish the continuation on Thursday March 12th.

Alvaro Fernandez: New York Times columnist David Brooks said last year that we live in a Cognitive Age, and encouraged readers to be aware of this change and try and adapt to the new reality. Can you explain the cognitive demands of today’s workplaces that weren’t there 30-40 years ago?

Maggie Jackson: Our workplaces have changed enormously in recent decades, and it’s easy to point to the Blackberry or the laptop as the sources of our culture of speed and overload and distraction. But it’s important to note first that our 24/7, fragmented work culture has deeper roots. With the first high-tech inventions, such as the cinema, phonograph, telegraph, rail, and car, came radical changes in human experience of time and space. Distance was shattered – long before email and red-eye flights. Telegraph operators – not online daters – experienced the first virtual love affairs, as evidenced by the 1890s novel Wired Love. Now, we wrestle with the effects of changes seeded long ago.

Today, the cognitive and physical demands on workers are steep. Consider 24/7 living. At great cost to our health, we operate in a sleepless, hurried world, ignoring cues of sun and season, the Industrial Age inventions of the weekend and vacation, and the rhythms of biology. We try to break the fetters of time – and live like perpetual motion machines. That’s one reason why we feel overloaded and stressed – conditions that are corrosive to problem-solving and clear thinking.

At the same time, our technologies allow us access to millions of information bites – producing an abundance of data that is both wondrous and dangerous. Unless we have the will, discipline and frameworks for turning this information into wisdom, we remain stuck on the surface of Read the rest of this entry »

As promised in my previous post on Neurogenesis and Brain Plasticity in Adult Brains, I will now list some interviews, video, articles, and books that go hand-in-hand with these fascinating topics we are discussing. Please comment below if you have favorite additional resources!

NEUROGENESIS

MIT news – Picower researcher finds neuron growth in adult brain

Society for Neuroscience brain brief – Adult Neurogenesis

BRAIN PLASTICITY

Neuroscience for Kids – Brain Plasticity: What Is It?

Society for Neuroscience brain brief – Brain Plasticity, Language Processing and Reading

Brain Science Podcast – Ginger Campbell interview with Norman Doidge, MD, Read the rest of this entry »

Back in July, I wrote a post entitled 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn. Those tips apply to students of any age, including adults, for ideally adults are still learners. Why is adult learning relevant in a brain-focused blog, you may wonder:

The short of it…

As we age, our brain:

• still forms new brain cells
• can change its structure & function
• finds positive stress can be beneficial; negative stress can be detrimental
• can thrive on novel challenges
• needs to be exercised, just like our bodies

The long of it…

Adults may have a tendency to get set in their ways – I’ve been doing it this way for a long time and it works, so why change? Turns out, though, that change can be a way to keep aging brains healthy. At the April Learning & the Brain conference, the theme of which was neuroplasticity, I attended several sessions on adult learning. Here’s what the experts are saying.

Read the rest of this entry »

What a beautiful display of creativity:

Physical Fitness ‘Godfather’ Jack LaLanne Turns to Brain Fitness, Becoming Ambassador for Dakim’s [m] Power System

- Dakim, Inc., announced today that 93-year-young Jack LaLanne, the world’s most iconic figure in health and fitness, has signed on as a “brain fitness motivational coach” on behalf of the company’s [m]Power Cognitive Fitness System, joining the company’s efforts to help seniors fight against dementia.

Read the rest of this entry »

In our Top 50 Brain Teasers post, we concluded with the challenge:

#50. Can you write a haiku describing your experience doing some of the previous teasers? The simple rules: write 3 lines, which don’t need to rhyme, containing 5,7, and 5 syllables. You can leave your haiku as a comment for extra points…

There has been a number of great and fun takers so far…enjoy their haikus below! And Happy Thanksgiving.

- Terry says: 

New information
Synthesizing my knowledge
A forward movement

- Frank says:

Painfully easy
Significantly harder
Mental stimulus

- Mark says:

I thought I did well
Then I reviewed my answers
I am retarded

- Chuck says: Read the rest of this entry »

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.”