You may have watched the new series Lie To Me, with Tim Roth, based on the work of Paul Ekman.

The second episode, which you can watch for free via Hulu.com Here, is pretty interesting, but the best part happens in the beginning, so you only need to watch a few minutes to learn why what are called “lie detectors” are nothing but biofeedback systems that measure physiological anxiety.

Biofeedback can be a very effective training tool for emotional self-regulation and stress management, precisely because it enables a faster feedback-based learning loop. Indeed, we are seeing a growing number of applications in the market, with names such as EmWave, StressEraser, RESPeRATE, Journey to the Wild Divine, and others.

Simply, don’t believe the technology is an effective lie detector.

Caroline and I wrote an article on Paul Ekman’s work a couple of years ago – let me republish it now, given his work has made it all the way to mainstream TV!

Paul Ekman has conducted extensive research on identifying emotions through facial expressions. As part of that research, and as part of the power of discipline and training, he learned how to consciously manipulate 42 facial muscles, including many that in most of us are beyond our control, and even awareness.

In the 60s and 70s when Ekman began looking into the universality of facial expressions, all the major contemporary social scientists, like Margaret Mead, believed that expressions were culturally learned, not innate. He traveled all over the world with pictures of people making distinct facial expressions and found people in cultures everywhere, from modern to stone age, agreed on the emotion behind the expression. He then turned to Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have the January edition of our monthly newsletter covering cognitive health and brain fitness topics. Please remember that you can subscribe to receive this Newsletter by email, simply by submitting your email at the top of this page.

Bird’s Eye View

Brain fitness heads towards its tipping point: How do you know when something is moving towards a Gladwellian tipping point? When health insurance companies and public policy makers launch significant initiatives. Dr. Gerard Finnemore provides a market overview, based on SharpBrains’ client webinar held last December.

Ten Reflections on Cognitive Health and Assessments: Here are 10 highlights from several stimulating January events:  Symposium on Adaptive Technology for the Aging (by Arizona State University), Health Bloggers’ Summit (by Consumer Reports), Traumatic Brain Injury (by Veteran Affairs in Palo Alto), and a new Alzheimer’s/ Dementia Expert Panel organized by the city of San Francisco.

News and Events

Nintendo Brain Age vs. Crossword Puzzles: we need much public education in order to help consumers separate reality from hope from hype. Nintendo is not helping, neither is media reporting.

Collection of recent news: including training for senior fitness trainers, reports on the importance of purpose,  on older driver safety, and more.

Upcoming events: I will be speaking soon at the New York Academy of Medicine, the American Society on Aging/ NCOA conference, and the Silvering Workforce Summit at the University of North Carolina. Let me know if you are attending any.

Education and Learning

Learning about Learning: an Interview with Joshua Waitzkin: Scott Barry Kaufman interviews “child prodigy” Joshua Waitzkin on The Art of Learning. Many fascinating insights, including “I think losing my first National Chess Championship was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, because it helped me avoid many of the psychological traps…(associated with being called a “child prodigy”)”.

Resources to help students build emotional intelligence: Daniel Goleman introduces educators and parents to a new book that “adds an important tool to the emotional intelligence kit: mindfulness, a moment-by-moment awareness of one’s internal state and external environment.”

Resources

Top 10 Cognitive Health and Brain Fitness Books: Here you have The 10 Most Popular Brain Fitness & Cognitive Health Books, based on book purchases by SharpBrains’ readers during 2008.

10-Question Program Evaluation Checklist: To help consumers and professionals navigate through the growing number of programs making “brain fitness” or “brain training” claims, we published last year this Evaluation Checklist. Now we are making the Checklist available as a Bookmark given recent requests by universities and conference organizers.

Brain Teaser

Brain Teaser to Exercise your Memory and Reasoning Skills: Dr. Pascale Michelon offers a stimulating teaser that not only helps exercise our brain but also educates us on how and why the same activity may exercise different brains differently – depending on where we are from.

(Editor’s note: Daniel Goleman is now conducting a great series of audio interviews including one with Richard Davidson on Training the Brain: Cultivating Emotional Skills. We are honored to bring you this guest post by Daniel Goleman, thanks to our collaboration with Greater Good Magazine.) 

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Resources to help students build emotional intelligence

By Daniel Goleman

The scene: a first-grade classroom in a Manhattan school. Not just any classroom—this one has lots of Special Ed students, who are very hyperactive. So the room is a whirlpool of frenzied activity. The teacher tells the kids that they’re going to listen to a CD. The kids quiet down a bit.

Then they get pretty still as the CD starts, and a man’s voice asks the kids to lie down on their backs, arms at their sides, and get a “breathing buddy,” like a stuffed animal, who will sit on their stomachs and help them be aware of their breathing. The voice takes the children through a series of breathing and body awareness exercises, and the kids manage to calm down and stay focused through the entire six minutes, which ends with them wiggling their toes.

“You’ve just learned how to make your body feel calm and relaxed,” says the voice. “And you can do this again any time you want.”

The voice on the CD is mine, though I’m reading the words of Linda Lantieri, who has pioneered public school programs in social and emotional learning that have been adopted worldwide.

Her newest program adds an important tool to the emotional intelligence kit: mindfulness, a moment-by-moment awareness of one’s internal state and external environment. In a new book, Building Emotional Intelligence, which comes with the CD, Lantieri uses mindfulness training to enhance concentration and attention among kids, and to help them learn to better calm themselves. Building Emotional Intelligence comes with instructions that explain how teachers and parents can adapt Latieri’s exercises to kids at different age levels (five to seven, eight to 11, or 12 and up) and provides detailed explanations of each exercise.

Lantieri’s project exemplifies the ways we can build on scientific insights to help children master the skills of emotional intelligence. As Richard Davidson, founder of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, explained to me in Read the rest of this entry »

A reader and writer sent us over the weekend the article below as “an OpEd submission”. We are not a newspaper, and don’t have a formal OpEd section, but are delighted to publish thoughtful, research-based pieces on topics related to lifelong cognitive development and health.

Here you are:

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Philosophy as the Missing Link – An Eye-Opening Audit of Our School’s Curriculum
By: Kimberly Wickham

The question might be asked, “Why would anyone want to teach philosophy to pre-adolescent children?” but there are very good reasons why one might want to take on such a lofty task. I am not suggesting that the history of philosophy would be particularly pertinent for a young child to learn, but there is substantial evidence to support the development of an already natural tendency towards philosophical thought. Some may think that the pre-adolescents haven’t got the cognitive developmental ability to wrap their minds around such an elusive and subjective study as philosophy. However, developing this skill has shown long term positive effects. These effects range from developing critical thinking skills and cognitive ability to raising emotional maturity and encouraging the child’s sense of security within his or her world.

For years there has been an emphasis on cognitive and physical aspects of children’s development, but recently more attention is being placed on both the social and emotional aspects of a child’s development. It is becoming recognized that a child’s emotional maturity has a big impact on their ability to learn and process information. While that, at first blush, may seem Read the rest of this entry »

Schools are beginning to offer an increasing number of courses in social and emotional intelligence, teaching students how to better understand their own emotions and the emotions of others.

It sounds warm and fuzzy, but it’s a trend backed up by hard data. Today, new studies reveal that teaching kids to be emotionally and socially competent boosts their academic achievement. More precisely, when schools offer students programs in social and emotional learning, their achievement scores gain around 11 percentage points.

That’s what I heard at a forum held last December by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). (Disclosure: I’m a co-founder of CASEL.) Roger Weissberg, the organization’s director, gave a preview of a massive study run by researchers at Loyola University and the University of Illinois, which analyzed evaluations of more than 233,000 students across the country.

Social-emotional learning, they discovered, helps students Read the rest of this entry »

Here you are have the bi-monthly Digest of our 10 most Popular blog posts. (Also, remember that you can subscribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our newsletter at the top of this page if you want to receive this digest by email).

  After many months of work we have just released our inaugural report The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008 for corporate executives, health care professionals, and investors. This report defines the emerging brain fitness software market and analyzes the size and trends of its four customer segments. For top 10 highlights and to purchase the report at a 10% discount (before March 20th) click here: Report: The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008

Brain Fitness News and Events

NEWS FEATURE-Brain fitness seen as hot industry of the future (Reuters 03/12): The most comprehensive article we have seen so far covering this emerging field, based on our market report and with original reporting. Highly recommended read.

Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Goleman requires no introduction. Personally, of all his books I have read, the one I found most stimulating was Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue With the Dalai Lama, a superb overview of what emotions are and how we can put them to good use. He is now conducting a great series of audio interviews including one with George Lucas on Educating Hearts and Minds: Rethinking Education.

We are honored to bring you a guest post by Daniel Goleman, thanks to our collaboration with Greater Good Magazine, a UC-Berkeley-based quarterly magazine that highlights ground breaking scientific research into the roots of compassion and altruism. Enjoy!

- Alvaro

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The Power of Mindsight

How can we free ourselves from prisons of the past?

– By Daniel Goleman

When you were young, which of these did you feel more often?

a) No matter what I do, my parents love me;

b) I can’t seem to please my parents, no matter what I do;

c) My parents don’t really notice me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Ekman has conducted extensive research on identifying emotions through facial expressions. As part of that research, and as part of the power of discipline and training, he learned how to consciously manipulate 42 facial muscles, including many that in most of us are beyond our control, and even awareness.

In the 60s and 70s when Ekman began looking into the universality of facial expressions, all the major contemporary social scientists, like Margaret Mead, believed that expressions were culturally learned, not innate. He proceeded traveled all over the world with pictures of people making distinct facial expressions and found people in cultures everywhere, from modern to stone age, agreed on the emotion behind the expression. He then turned to studying the production of these expressions and the 43 facial muscles that can create 10,000 expressions, which form the basis of his training.

He found seven universal emotions with unique facial expression. The emotions are: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise, and contempt. At least five of these are shared with non-human primates as well. Interestingly, the smile is the easiest expression to recognize, and the easiest to identify from afar. These emotions have a specific Read the rest of this entry »

The Financial Times has a fun interview today as part of their “Lunch with the FT” series.

Daniel Goleman is the author of bestseller Emotional Intelligence and is now promoting his recent book Social Intelligence.

An quote from the interview:

- The journalist asks, “So how do the rest of us get better?”.

- The answer, he says, is very simple: by listening.

Listening poorly is the common cold of social intelligence. And it’s being made worse by technology. To have a human moment, you need to be fully present. You have to be away from your laptop, you put down your BlackBerry, you end your daydream and you pay full attention to the person you’re with. It may sound rudimentary, but think about how often we just keep multitasking and half pay attention. You can overcome that by becoming mindful of what is happening.

Keep reading the FT article Poetry in emotion.

And Social Intelligence and Mirror Neurons