“We’ve all heard about dumbing down. But there is plenty of evidence that the opposite is also true. Is this, in fact, the age of mass intelligence?”

Fascinating article in Intelligent Life, a publication by The Economist:

THE AGE OF MASS INTELLIGENCE

- “Millions more people are going to museums, literary festivals and operas; millions more watch demanding television programmes or download serious-minded podcasts. Not all these activities count as mind-stretching, of course. Some are downright fluffy. But, says Donna Renney, the chief executive of the Cheltenham Festivals, audiences increasingly want “the buzz you get from working that little bit harder”. This is a dramatic yet often unrecognised development. “When people talk and write about culture,” says Ira Glass, the creator of the riveting public-radio show “This American Life”, “it’s apocalyptic. We tell ourselves that everything is in bad shape. But the opposite is true. There’s an abundance of really interesting things going on all around us.”

- “Third, what does all this say about the widespread view that societies are dumbing down, educational standards are crumbling and people’s ability to concentrate is collapsing? The reply must be that it cannot be true across the board and that for a significant number, the opposite is the case: people want more intellectually demanding things to see and hear, not fewer. Surely both things are happening at once: part of the population is dumbing down, part is wising up.”

Full article: THE AGE OF MASS INTELLIGENCE

For a related blog article: Exercise your brain in the Cognitive Age

Today we have the pleasure to have Dr. Pascale Michelon, one of our new Expert Contributors, write her first article here. Enjoy, and please comment so we hear your thoughts and engage in a nice conversation. 

(Btw, if you notice some similarity between the colors in the fMRI scan below and the look & feel of this site…well, the reason is that those orange-grey fMRI colors were our inspiration! the orange color denotes the most brain activation).

- Alvaro

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You have probably heard about CAT and MRI scans (produced thanks to machines like the one to the top right). So you know that these are techniques that doctors and scientists use to look inside the brain.

You have probably also heard about brain fitness and how important it is to keep a healthy brain to be protected against age-related and disease-related brain damages.

The question we ask here is the following: Can we use brain scans to evaluate how fit the brain is? Before we try to answer this question let’s start with the basics and try to understand how brain scans work.

Brain imaging, also called neuroimaging, allows one to Read the rest of this entry »

Hot off the press!

We just found on the newstand an amazing special issue of Discover magazine on The Brain-An Owner’s Manual (Spring 2007), with fascinating articles on how the mind changes from infancy to old age, female vs. male brains (yes, we men have brains too), videogames as brain training (by Steven Johnson), an article titled “24 hours in the life of the brain”, the “most magnificent neurons, and much much more.

A bit technical, but not too much for anyone who reads popular science books. It will probably become a classic for brain aficionados. We can not find any mention of it in www.discover.com, so we will keep our eyes open and link to the index and more info as soon as we find somewhere to link to…