Playing the Blame Game
– Video games stand accused of causing obesity, violence, and lousy grades. But new research paints a surprisingly complicated and positive picture, reports Greater Good Magazine’s Jeremy Adam Smith.

Cheryl Olson had seen her teenage son play video games. But like many parents, she didn’t know much about them.

Then in 2004 the U.S. Department of Justice asked Olson and her husband, Lawrence Kutner, to run a federally funded study of how video games affect adolescents.

Olson and Kutner are the co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Mental Health and Media. Olson, a public health researcher, had studied the effects of media on behavior but had never examined video games, either in her research or in her personal life.

And so the first thing she did was watch over the shoulder of her son, Michael, as he played his video games. Then, two years into her research—which combined surveys and focus groups of junior high school students—Michael urged her to pick up a joystick. “I definitely felt they should be familiar with the games if they were doing the research,” says Michael, who was 16 at the time and is now 18.

Olson started with the PC game Read the rest of this entry »

Several recent NYT articles focus on several fascinating frontiers of brain science. We know much more about brain and mind than only 20 years ago, yet exponentially less than 20 years from now.

A few worthy explorations on mindfulness, perceptual capacities, and the power of placebo: Read the rest of this entry »

Today I had a great conversation with Martin Buschkuehl, one of the University of Michigan’s Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab researchers  involved in the cognitive training study that has received much media attention (New York Times, Wired, Science News…) since late April, when the study was published at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Reference: Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2008). Improving Fluid Intelligence With Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(19), 6829-6833 (You can read it here, with subscription).

Before you keep reading, let me clarify a couple of terms:

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).

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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 »

Stephanie West Allen kindly alerted us of her impressive new initiative and blog, in collaboration with Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, titled Brains On Purpose™. They have partnered to bring a series of seminars on neuroscience and conflict resolution: Portland, Oregon, in November 2007, and San Francisco Bay Area in January 2008-so far.  Dr. Schwartz has previously participated in a similar and fruitful initiative on The Neuroscience of Leadership with David Rock. We wish them best luck in this exciting initiative.

Stephanie writes a great blog post on “What are you feeling?” “What am I feeling?” These questions are tools for brain taming, explaining how “A flurry of articles appeared this week (such as this one in Scientific American: “Name that feeling: You’ll feel better“) about the neuroscience research showing that labeling your feelings can quiet your brain and increase impulse control”

adding that…

“In our recent article “Lead Your Brain Instead Of Letting It Lead You,” we talk about the practice of making mental notes (first described by Jeff in his book Dear Patrick: Life is Tough – Here’s Some Good Advice). Developing your skill in making mental notes can bring relief when high conflict occurs.” and “The more skilled you get at labeling, the more quickly — no matter the situation — you can return to equanimity and composure.”

Check her post to learn more about the labeling technique. Developing mental notes can be a very powerful way to self-regulate behavior, not too different from cognitive therapy and emotional self-regulation techniques.

Exciting to see more scientists and practitioners bringing research into practice! As we have mentioned, Brain Fitness is something that applies to different ages and different purposes, and this is a great example for lawyers.