SharpBrains

Consider Linda, a 31-year-old woman, single and bright. As a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti-nuclear protests.

Which is more probable? (a) Linda is today a bank teller; (b) Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.

Quick, what's your answer?

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How many differences can you spot?

You have seen and maybe tried that exercise or game in the Sunday paper many times: find 5 differences between the two images.

You may like it or not. You may think it is only for kids. But it is a GREAT brain exercise!

Let’s see what cognitive processes and which brain areas are involved in this exercise:

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Here you are have the bi-monthly update with our 10 most Popular blog posts. (Also, remember that you can subscribe to receive our RSS feed, or to our newsletter, at the top of this page, if you want to receive this digest by email).

 News and Events

Exercise your brain in the Cognitive Age: The New York Times published two thought-provoking articles on brain and cognitive fitness, one of them featuring SharpBrains.

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(hat tip: Mind Hacks).

Please try this experiment, conceived by Simons and Chabris for their now classic study, and now packaged in a nicer video production. You will watch a brief video clip showing two teams, and your challenge is to count the TOTAL number of times that the basketballs change hands.

Click Here to view the Basketball Experiment clip.

You can read about the fascinating results here, and read the full study on sustained inattentional blindness (PDF).

Credit for pic: Haines World

Boost your visuospatial skills and learn about your brain
-- By Dr. Pascale Michelon

Visuospatial skills are used everyday in many ways, ranging from going from one room to another in your house to solving a jigsaw puzzle and navigating in a new city.

One specific visuospatial skill has to do with moving spatial information around in your head. It is called mental rotation. 

Let’s take an example. Can you picture in your head an arrow pointing to the right? Now, turn this arrow so it points to the left. Done? 

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A quick teaser: Imagine you are one of 120 people in a room. Each person in the room is given two lengths of rope and told to chose two of his or her four rope-ends at random and to tie them together. Then each person is told to tie the remaining two rope-ends together.

Then, we count up the loops of rope. How many should there be?

SOLUTION: Continue Reading »

It is always good to stimulate our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selection of the 50 Brain Teasers that people have enjoyed the most in our blog and speaking engagements.

Fun experiments on how our brains work

1. Do you think you know the colors?: try the Stroop Test.

2. Can you count?: Basketball attention experiment (Interactive).

3. Who is this?: A very important little guy (Interactive).

4. How is this possible?.

5. Take the Senses Challenge (Interactive).

6. Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?.

Attention

7. How are your divided attention skills? check out "Inside and Outside" (Interactive, from MindFit).

8. Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? try "Two in One" (Interactive, from MindFit)

9. Count the Fs in this sentence.

10. What do you see? can you alternate between 2 views?.

Memory

11. Easy one...draw the face of a penny, please. Continue Reading »

Here is new brain teaser written by puzzle master Wes Carroll.

The Really, Really, Really Big Number

Difficulty: HARDER
Type: MATH (Numerical/Abstract)
Intimidation Factor: HIGH --- but don't be scared!

Question:
When you divide 12 by 5, the remainder is 2; it's what's left over after you have removed all the 5s from the 12.  When you raise 4 to the fifth power (that is, 4⁵), you multiply four by itself five times: 4×4x4×4x4, which equals 1,024.

What is the remainder when you divide 100¹⁰⁰ by 11?

Click to read the Solution and Explanation.

Below you have a quick "email interview" we had yesterday with a journalist, it may help you navigate through this emerging field. (if you want some brain exercise right now, you can check our Top 50 Brain Teasers).

1. Why is it so important to exercise our brains?

Our brains are composed of different areas and functions, and we can strengthen them through mental exercise- or they get atrophied for lack of practice. The benefits are both short-term (improved concentration and memory, sustained mental clarity under stressful situations...), and long-term (creation of a "brain reserve" that help protect us against potential problems such as Alzheimer's).

2. What are 1 or 2 things that are guaranteed "brain drains"?

- high-levels of anxiety and stress, that are guaranteed to distract us from our main goals and waste our limited mental energies.

- a very repetitive and routine-driven life, lacking in novelty and stimulation. We have brains to be able to learn and to adapt to new environments

The trick therefore, is to take on new challenges that are not way too difficult/ impossible, and learn how to manage stress to prevent anxiety from kicking-in.

3. What are three easy and quick mental exercises that everyone should be doing daily?

- For stress management: a 5-minute visualization, combining deep and regular breathings with seeing in our mind's eye beautiful landscapes and/ or remembering times in our past when we have been successful at a tough task

- For short-term memory: try a series subtracting 7 from 200 (200 193 186 179...), or a series involving multiplication (2,3 4,6 6,9 8,12...) or exponential series (2 4 8 16 32 64...) the goal is not to be a math genius, simply to train and improve our short-term memory. Another way is to try and remember our friends telephone numbers.

- In general: try something different every day, no matter how little. Take a different route to work. Talk to a different colleague. Ask an unexpected question. Approach every day as a living experiment, a learning opportunity.

4. Are crossword puzzles and sudoku really as great for exercising our brain as they are reported to be? Why? And what about activities like knitting?

"Use it or lose it" may be misleading if Continue Reading »

A quick tour around the blogosphere:

Great edition of Tangled Bank 75

How to Keep Employees

GNIF Brain Blogger

Emotional Eating
Festival of Stocks #27

Encephalon #18

Positive Thinking for the Week Ahead

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