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A recent CNN article explains well why a growing number of companies use brainteasers and logic puzzles of a type called “guesstimations” during job interviews:

- "Seemingly random questions like these have become commonplace in Silicon Valley and other tech outposts, where companies aren't as interested in the correct answer to a tough question as they are in how a prospective employee might try to solve it. Since businesses today have to be able to react quickly to shifting market dynamics, they want more than engineers with high IQs and good college transcripts. They want people who can think on their feet."

What are technology companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) and consulting companies (McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture...) looking for? They want employees with brain teasers job interview good so-called Executive Functions: problem-solving, cognitive flexibility, planning, working memory, decision-making, even emotional self-regulation (don’t try to solve one of these puzzles while being angry, or stressed out).

Want to try a few? Below you have our Top 7 Guesstimations/ Logic Puzzles for Brain Challenge:

Please try to GUESS the answers to the questions below based on your own logical approach. The goal is not to find out (or Google) the right answer, but to Continue Reading »

As promised in my previous post on Neurogenesis and Brain Plasticity in Adult Brains, I will now list some interviews, video, articles, and books that go hand-in-hand with these fascinating topics we are discussing. Please comment below if you have favorite additional resources!

NEUROGENESIS

MIT news – Picower researcher finds neuron growth in adult brain

Society for Neuroscience brain brief – Adult Neurogenesis

BRAIN PLASTICITY

Neuroscience for Kids – Brain Plasticity: What Is It?

Society for Neuroscience brain brief – Brain Plasticity, Language Processing and Reading

Brain Science Podcast – Ginger Campbell interview with Norman Doidge, MD, Continue Reading »

Welcome to the 30th edition of Medicine 2.0, the blog carnival devoted to articles that analyze the current and potential impact of web 2.0 technologies on medicine and healthcare.

"Medicine 2.0" 101

The first question is, of course, "What exactly is Medicine 2.0?". The second, "Who cares?". The third, "Why?"

Anthropologists are here to help. Who better to help understand emerging artifacts of the health and medical tribe, as evidenced by the fantastic lecture An Anthropological Introduction To Youtube given to the Library of Congress by Professor Michael Wesch. As Open Thinking suggests, the video which is 55 minutes long provides an "excellent backgrounder on social media, user-generated content, and online communities through the lens of anthropology."

If you are more the PowerPoint type, you can access the great slide presentation and list of websites provided by eHealth: see Web 2.0 in Clinical Research.

The Future of Medicine and Health 2.0

Admittedly, the Medicine 2.0 field is still small and emerging. But, how will it grow? What new healthcare outcomes will it enable and support? What may be the trade-offs to consider, if any? Continue Reading »

Here you have the twice-a-month newsletter with our most popular blog posts. Please remember that you can subscribe to receive this Newsletter by email, simply by submitting your email at the top of this page.

News and Events

Brain Health Promotion by the American Society on Aging: You may be interested in the excellent agenda the American Society on Aging has put together for health professionals, from September 2-5th in San Francisco, devoting a full day to Brain Health. Alvaro will participate in 3 of the sessions, including giving a keynote on the Future of Brain Health.

Can Google Kill Neurons and Rewire Your Whole Brain?: The Atlantic Monthly published an article titled Is Google Making Us Stupid, which basically blamed Google for literally rewiring our brains into more stupid brains (not being able to pay attention, read deep books...). We are not very impressed by the superficial treatment given to this very important topic.

Mobile Brain Training, Scientific Learning, and More News: Overview of cognitive health and fitness news, including recent research on how physical exercise can help diagnosed Alzheimer's patients, the new Mac version of Posit Science's auditory processing training program, and more.

Market Analysis

Top 10 Brain Health Predictions: In an emerging market, like brain health and training, it is difficult to make precise projections. Here we point out a number of trends that executives, consumers, public policy makers, and the media should watch closely in the coming years. Your feedback is very welcome...we will give a complimentary copy of our market report to the person who provides the most insightful additional prediction by August 10th.

Cognitive Health Pioneers: Thank You! The quality and variety of our client list brings up the cross-sector demand for quality information in the emerging brain fitness/ cognitive health category. And it helps us prioritize efforts and coverage of market and research news and trends.

Research Analysis

Encephalon blog carnival: Brain & Mind Research: We hosted Encephalon´s 50th edition, where you will find a selection of superb blog posts on all things Brain and Mind. Examples? you may enjoy Facebook Ate My Psychiatrist or perhaps the Compulsive Collecting of Toy Bullets and Televisions.

Attention Deficits At Work: Dr. Pascale Michelon provides an in-depth overview of a recent study by Ron de Graaf and colleagues, in which they found that an average of 3.5% of workers (in ten countries) meet the criteria for adult ADHD, In the US, the percentage increased to 4.5%. This has clear effects on productivity.

Education and Learning

Learning & the Brain: Resources for Educators: Educator Laurie Bartels reviews her favorite brain resources for teaching and learning: books, conferences, and websites.

Brain Teasers

Top 25 Brain and Mind Haikus. Yours?: Readers have contributed a good number of haikus on brain-related topics. You can follow the link to check out our Favorite 7, and many other fun ones...which ones do you like the most?

A few colleagues and I just had an interesting exchange on the recent article at The Atlantic, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, which basically blamed Google for literally rewiring our brains into more stupid brains (not being able to pay attention, read deep books...) based on a number of personal anecdotes and a little research.

My 2 cents: this is a complex topic and we'd first need to clarify the question, before looking for answers to support or refute it. I found the Atlantic article superficial for a meaningful conversation, with its title and main premise making little sense: Google can not makes us stupid, in the same way that guns don't make us violent or pens don't make us good writers.

The author of the article complains about having less of a number of cognitive abilities than he once had. Now, what is the case to make Google the main suspect?.

Before we judge something as "good" or "bad" or "stupid" we need to establish: Continue Reading »

We sometimes neglect to mention a very basic yet powerful method of cognitive and emotional development, for children and adults alike: Play.

Dr. David Elkind, author of The Power of Play: Learning That Comes Naturally, discusses the need to build a more "playful culture" in this great article brought to you thanks to our collaboration with Greater Good Magazine.

- Alvaro

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Can We Play?

-- By Dr. David Elkind

Play is rapidly disappearing from our homes, our schools, and our neighborhoods. Over the last two decades alone, children have lost eight hours of free, unstructured, and spontaneous play a week. More than 30,000 schools in the United States have eliminated recess to make more time for academics. From 1997 to 2003, children's time spent outdoors fell 50 percent, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth at the University of Maryland. Hofferth has also found that the amount of time children spend in organized sports has doubled, and the number of minutes children devote each week to passive leisure, not including watching television, has increased from 30 minutes to more than three hours. It is no surprise, then, that childhood obesity is now considered an epidemic.

But the problem goes well beyond obesity. Decades of research has shown that play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social-emotional development at all ages. This is especially true of the purest form of play: the unstructured, self-motivated, imaginative, independent kind, where children initiate their own games and even invent their own rules.

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.

Hi!
This is Andreas, the Norwegian MD/PhD in neuroscience candidate who worked as an intern at SharpBrains a few months ago. Now I’m back in chilly Oslo where I’ve just begun my PhD program on cognitive training for patients with memory problems.

Today I felt it was time to reflect upon my 3 month stay in San Francisco earlier this year. It all started when in April when the Norwegian school of entrepreneurship said: You’ve got a ticket to San Francisco, now you got to find the perfect start-up company to work for.

Being interested in brain training, I googled “Brain fitness San Francisco” and guess what I found? I got in touch with Alvaro Fernandez, the co-founder of SharpBrains.com and two months later I started working with him and his team.

As a scientist, being placed in an exciting start-up company in a novel market like brain fitness was a huge learning experience that gave me hands-on knowledge of business and entrepreneurial culture. Being a neuroscience student, I know that learning physically changes my brain, strengthening it.

Here’s a list of some of the key things I’ve learned:

1) First of all, one of key rules for brain fitness is learning. In SharpBrains I immediately got to experience what a great learning culture can be all about – from key insights in entrepreneurship to how to make creative videos and writing for the web. The urge for constant learning is both fun and stimulating – and I appreciate Alvaro’s suggestion to write this post.
Continue Reading »

A couple of good recent articles:

(You can join our monthly newsletter by subscribing at the top of this page).

Brain Games will give adults all the challenge they can handle

Baltimore Sun, MD. Mar 22, 2007.The reporter provides a great survey of products. The only parts I find missing are:

1) what specific cognitive skill/s is/are being trained by each product? if we understand that the brain has a variety of structural and functional areas, it becomes evident that different programs may be training different "mental muscles".

2) How does each program enable the user measure progress in an objective way? I'd say this is the main difference between "games" and brain fitness programs. If you have a wildly different brain age everytime you try...that so-called brain age is not very credible.

Does brain exercise fight dementia?
Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription), MN. Mar 18, 2007.As the article mentions, no program can claim to "prevent Alzheimer's". And I haven't seen Posit Science (or us) claim such a thing, or imply it. But what can be claimed is meaningful: Continue Reading »

Healthy Senior Here is question 14 of 25 from Brain Fitness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions. To download the complete version, please click here.

Question:
Does a brain fitness program prevent Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia?

Key Points:

Studies have shown mentally active people have lower rates and later onset of symptoms for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. These diseases involve a number of variables like family history, physical fitness, nutrition, and brain fitness.
People who remain intellectually active and engage in hobbies reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by one third.

Answer:
Continue Reading »

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Top 7 Brainteasers for Job Interviews and Brain Challenge

Resources for Brain Health Across the Lifespan

Medicine 2.0: the impact of web 2.0 on healthcare?

Update: Brain Health Promotion Event and Predictions

Can Google Kill Neurons and Rewire Your Whole Brain?

Cognitive and Emotional Development Through Play

Brain Rules: science and practice

Lifelong Learning: Changing My Brain

Brain Fitness news.

Brain Health and Alzheimer's disease