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:
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An interesting recent article announcesPupils to start day with Nintendo Brain Training(UK's Daily Telegraph). Some quotes: 
- "Children at 16 primary schools are to start each day by playing on a Nintendo games console, it was disclosed yesterday."
- "The pupils will play "brain training" exercises before lessons after a pilot scheme at a school in Dundee found that it boosted learning ability."
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Orli from Neurontic tagged me with a new meme –writing about 8 Random Personal Facts- that is circulating among science bloggers. Well, I will happily write about 8 facts that appeared in unexpected ways yet, seen with perspective, seem to be a type of non-random randomness, if that makes sense…
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As the oldest child, I was the most responsible/ serious/ with best grades…you get the picture. One of my youngest siblings specialized in teasing me and making my life difficult (from my perspective then). At some point, I realized that my automatic mental reaction to anything suspicious that happened in my life (my bike is not where I left it, there are 2 books missing…) was an angry “this must have been my brother!” followed by intra-family conflict and the need for UN peacekeepers. Let’s say he was responsible for only 40% of such events…so I realized my attitude made no sense and it was something I needed to control. So, at some point, I developed the mental habit of making fun of my own stupidity whenever that automatic reaction appeared, and protecting a more rational approach to solving the problem.
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Around the same time, at a routine meeting between my mother, school staff and myself, someone made a comment along “Alvaro has spectacular grades, but he must understand that success in life does not depend on grades alone”. Fascinating, I remember thinking, how can that be possible? What may that mean? Is it not “fair” and self-evident that if I have great grades everything good will follow in life? Maybe this opened my mind to understanding that “intelligence” goes well beyond IQ…
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For many years I kept a journal-like document with brief “lessons learned” and “concepts/ sayings / realities I don’t understand yet”. Something like a “diary of learning and things to be learned”. I don’t keep such a document anymore…and certainly not because now I understand everything.
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My last 2 years in high school were extremely social, having relocated to a
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