How many of the people behind the blogs you read, have you actually met in person? I hadn’t met a single one before yesterday.

Last night Alvaro and I were invited by Bora at A blog around the clock for a blogger get-together at Jupiter in Berkeley . Bora who is a part of the Scienceblog umbrella had gathered an interesting group of people, mainly bloggers with diverse backgrounds such as life science, law, anthropology – you name it.

Remembering names is a huge brain exercise for me, since I tend to forget especially names I haven’t heard before. I have tried to pick up some tricks for remembering names from Merlin Mann at 43folders. Let’s see who I can remember from the event:

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Ellen recently wrote a nice post titled Top Ten Tips for Men Who Lead Women, and asked for volunteers to offer a complementary perspective. I hope you enjoy!

1. We men know we are hard to lead, and that can be stressful for you and for us. You should know that stress affects short term memory, so it is important to be able to manage stress well, with meditation or other methods. Check here your level of stress to see how much this point applies to you. Please remember, laughing is good for your brain.  
2. Don’t think too much-we don’t. If we do, we try to find ways to self-talk us out of that uncomfortable state.
3. Please remember our humble origins. We are tool-using animals, which is why we like playing with all kinds of toys, from a car to that blackberry. 
4. When we are stubborn, you are entitled to remind us that even apes can learn-if you help us see the point. Show us that change is possible at any age. Believe it or not, we can listen.
5. Especially if we can find common ground: what about chatting about sports psychology?.
6. Please motivate us to listen and be open minded to learn with wise words. If that doesn’t work, please persevere with nice words. Please don’t ever say that we are worse than pink dolphins-if we feel attacked, we’ll just disengage.
7. Sometimes we don’t cooperate enough?. Please give us time for our brains to fully evolve, we have been trying for a while!
8. You can help us grow. For the next leadership workshop, buy us copies of the Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain book. You may think we don’t need this… but at our core we really want to  get better at Gratitude and Altruism. We want to be able to play with the ultimate toy: our genes!
9. If that book is sold out, we could also benefit from reading Damasio’s Descartes Error and discover how emotions are important for good decision-making. Or help us improve our ability to read emotional messages. As long as we believe we can somehow benefit from it, we’ll try!
10. If you lead someone with Bill Gates-like Frontal Lobes, congratulate him for his brain. If you don’t, encourage him to follow track. Please be patient…

Now, any takers for Top Ten Tips for Women Who Lead Women or Men Who Lead Men?

We often are told that we offer too much content for you to read given various time pressures… but it is tough for us to write less given the wealth of areas we cover around cognitive and emotional training.

To make your life easier (and please feel free to give us feedback!), what we will do is to offer a Monthly Digest of Most Popular Blog Posts. Today, August 1st, we will list the most popular July posts. Consider it your monthly Brain Exercise Magazine

(Also, remember that you can subscribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Topics section, and subscribe to our monthly newsletter at the top of this page).

News you can use

Trading performance psychology and self-talk

Stress Management for Lawyers

Mental Training for Gratitude and Altruism 

 

Brain Fitness/ Training Market News

MarketWatch on Beating forgetfulness and boosting the brain

Nintendo BrainAge, Lumosity, Happy Neuron, MyBrainTrainer…

Brain Health through Serious Games and Brain Exercise

Brain Fitness Workshops

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Brain Fitness class at UC Berkeley

 

Healthy Aging

Interview with Neuroscientist Yaakov Stern: Build Your Cognitive Reserve 

Judson Laipply’s Dancing Brain

Jack and Elaine LaLanne and Brain Health 

Exercise Your Brain! Enjoy Learning!

 

Attention Deficits

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Hi,

It’s Andreas, the neuroscience intern from Norway.

Lately, you might have noticed the comedian Judson Laipply’s awesome movie clip, the Evolution of Dance on Youtube?

The dance is part of Laipply’s “Inspirational Comedy” and has become a huge success. As a neuroscientist I’m interested in what are the neural substrates of dance? Further, I thought of ways to express this in an easy way so that people can learn more about the dance and the brain in a fun way. The result is my new Youtube video: A neurocomment on Laipply’s movie clip.

[youtube QQNhP2oOexU]
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A collection of recent announcement in the “brain games” or “brain training games” space:

The Wii sets new generational standards for the videogame industry

• “The ageing of the Japanese population compelled gamemaker Nintendo to widen its audience. Now, the Wii is leading the industry standards. But hardcore gamers are still too important to be neglected.”

Strain your brain the smart way

• “George Harrison, Nintendo’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, has said that more than half of the company’s marketing for Wii is aimed at adults. And the system has been presented at conventions for the aging “gray gamer” population.” and talks about sudoku, Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, and more.

SBT Announces the Acquisition of Quixit

• “Scientific Brain Training (”SBT”), based in Lyon, France, today has announced that Read the rest of this entry »

A dolphin made a lot of blog-buzz this Monday, being the 14th pink bottlenose dolphin described in history. Bottlenoses are quite special; did you know that they are one of a few species in addition to humans that is observed to use tools? Their relative brain size isn’t that different from humans either.

The Bottlenose dolphins are actually the most common and well known of all dolphins. Not too long ago, scientists used to believe that “tool use” was one of the characteristics that set humans apart from all other animals. Later, scientists discovered the use of tools by great apes. More recently, bottlenose dolphins in Australia’s Shark bay are observed to carry sea sponges on their beaks for protection when searching for food in the sandy sea bottom.

What is really fascinating is that the dolphins probably learned the trick from their moms rather than inheriting a sponge-shuttling gene. Dr. Michael Krutzen at the University of Zürich which first discovered the phenomena, writes in his Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences publication that dolphins’ sponge use is a case of cultural transmission-the passing along of a learned behaviour.
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Great March 19th issue of Newsweek Magazine, announcing the hiring of science writer Sharon Begley, who leads the cover story on The Evolution Revolution. You will find:

• The New Science of Human Evolution: “The new science of the brain and DNA is rewriting the history of human origins”.
• Live Talk: Sharon Begley on the new science of evolution
• Think Thin To Get Thin by Judith Beck (daughter of Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, applying CT techniques to weight loss).
• Compassion Fatigue Hits Vet Caregivers: ”For thousands who treat veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), ‘compassion fatigue’ is a very real problem” 
• “The literary landscape that shaped the baby boomers”

Talking about DNA, my wife and I just ordered our participation kit from National Geographic: The Genographic Project to learn more about our origins. Looks like a very worthy project. She, from Russian and German recent ancestors; me, born in Spain’s Basque Country. We will see what we find out!