Dr. Adrian Preda, our newest Expert Con­trib­u­tor, writes today the first in a series of thought-provoking arti­cles, chal­leng­ing us to think about phys­i­cal exer­cise as the best and most unap­pre­ci­ated form of “brain exer­cise”. A superb article.

And one thing is clear, he points out: “the brain really likes it when it’s asked to be “active”. Pas­sive audi­ences, which are spoon fed infor­ma­tion, score less well when tested on reten­tion and under­stand­ing of the pre­sented mate­r­ial than audi­ences that were kept engaged through the process.”

So, will you write a com­ment below and con­tribute to an engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion? Thoughts? reac­tions? ques­tions?
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Don’t ignore plain old com­mon sense.

Brain Lessons Part 1

– By Adrian Preda, M.D.

Let me start with a list of com­mon biases: expen­sive is bet­ter than cheap, free is of dubi­ous value (why would then be free?), rare is likely to be valu­able, and while new is bet­ter than old, ancient is always best. Which explains a com­mon sce­nario that is reen­acted about twice a week in my office. It starts like this: a patient shows me a fancy look­ing bot­tle of the brain sup­ple­ment of the week: ancient roots with obscure names mixed together in another novel com­bi­na­tion which you can exclu­sively find in that one and only store (rar­ity oblige!). And not to for­get: it ain’t cheap either! Of course, there it is, the per­fect the recipe for suc­cess: ancient yet new, rare and expen­sive. It got to be good! But is it, really?

Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to announce that we’ll have 2 addi­tional excel­lent con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing February:

- Adrian Preda, M.D., will write about a brain plas­tic­ity topic.

Adrian Preda, M.D. is an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Human Behav­ior in the UC Irvine School of Med­i­cine. His exper­tise in human behav­ior, psy­chol­ogy and spir­i­tu­al­ity is based on years of expe­ri­ence work­ing as a psy­chi­a­trist, psy­chother­a­pist, teacher and researcher in a vari­ety of aca­d­e­mic clin­i­cal and non-clinical set­tings, includ­ing Yale Psy­chi­atric Insti­tute, Yale New Haven Hos­pi­tal, Yale Health Plan, UT South­west­ern and UC Irvine Neuro-Psychiatric Research.

- Joanne Jacobs, edu­ca­tion expert and great blog­ger, will par­tic­i­pate in our Author Speaks Series. 

Once a Knight Rid­der columnist, Joanne is now a free­lance writer and author of a book about a char­ter school that pre­pares His­panic stu­dents for college. Her most recent book is Our School: The Inspir­ing Story of Two Teach­ers, One Big Idea and the Char­ter School That Beat the Odds.  

Motto Mag­a­zine brings a great inter­view between Anita Sharpe and Michael Ray, on How To Reach Your High­est Goal. Very fun week­end read­ing mate­r­ial, includ­ing plenty of quotes and reflec­tions on how cre­ativ­ity can be trained/ enhanced by one of my favorite Stan­ford MBA pro­fes­sors. Some quotes:

• “But as the 1980s began, Ray and Myers kicked off more than two decades teach­ing one of the most influ­en­tial and talked about courses at Stan­ford University’s Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness — a class on cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion. They taught MBA stu­dents who would go on to become some of the great­est cre­ators in the world of busi­ness, includ­ing eBay’s first pres­i­dent, Jef­frey Skoll, and Good to Great author Jim Collins.”
• “When (Apple co-founder) Steve Jobs came to our class, every­body was say­ing we have to get into the com­puter busi­ness. He said, you don’t nec­es­sar­ily have to do that. He said, go into San Fran­cisco and get a job as a waiter and find out what comes out of that.”
• MOTTO: You have had a num­ber of renowned and suc­cess­ful stu­dents. How would you sum­ma­rize the char­ac­ter­is­tics that they share that con­tribute to their inner and outer success?
• RAY: A sense of open­ness of con­scious­ness. Those peo­ple who are Read the rest of this entry »