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 Continue Reading »
As you have probably noticed, a growing number of Expert Contributors are writing in our blog, so that we can collectively discuss the latest research and trends on cognitive and brain health, and the implications of brain research in general for our everyday lives.
If you haven't done so already, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter (above) and our RSS feed (on the right).
Below you have the profiles of some of our Contributors and links to their best articles with us so far. Enjoy!
Continue Reading »
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
----------------
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.
Continue Reading »
Very interesting new study, Critical Period Plasticity of Adult-Born Neurons, published in the journal Neuron by a team of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers. The press release New Adult Brain Cells May Be Central To Lifelong Learning contains a good summary (the bold format is mine):
- "The steady formation of new brain cells in adults may represent more than merely a patching up of aging brains, a new study has shown."
- "The new adult brain cells may serve to give the adult brain the same kind of learning ability that young brains have while still allowing the existing, mature circuitry to maintain stability."
- "The researchers found that the new adult neurons showed a pattern of changing plasticity very similar to that seen in brain cells in newborn animals. That is, the new adult brain cells showed a "critical period" in which they were highly plastic before they settled into the less plastic properties of mature brain cells. In newborn animals, such a critical period enables an important, early burst of wiring of new brain circuitry with experience."
- "The researchers also observed in the new adult neurons anatomical evidence of the same kind of formation of new connections that take place in the brains of newborns as they wire new pathways in response to experience."
- "They concluded that "adult neurogenesis may represent not merely a replacement mechanism for lost neurons, but instead an ongoing developmental process that continuously rejuvenates the mature nervous system by offering expanded capacity of plasticity in response to experience throughout life."
In short: not only do we know today that the adult brain is capable of creating new neurons, but this shows that our experience influences what happens to those neurons once created. Pretty revolutionary understanding, that still needs to permeate through society and influence our lifestyles and habits.
Some related posts:
