Where does our “Feel­ing of Know­ing” come from? Have you ever felt cer­tain that you knew an answer even though you couldn’t think of it right off? Where does that “feel­ing of know­ing” come from? The answer to this ques­tion is the focus of neu­rol­o­gist Robert Burton’s new book On Being Cer­tain: Believ­ing You Are Right Even When You’re Not.

I recently reviewed Dr. Burton’s book on the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast and last week I had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view him for the show. He explained that one of the ori­gins for his book was his expe­ri­ence with patients with con­di­tions like Cotard’s syn­drome (where the patient thinks he is dead or does not exist). What Dr. Bur­ton calls the “feel­ing of know­ing” is so strong that peo­ple con­sis­tently trust it even when their beliefs con­tra­dict the evi­dence. At first it might seem sur­pris­ing that this feel­ing is gen­er­ated at an uncon­scious level in our brain, yet the same sort of pro­cess­ing cre­ates the world we see and hear. It is well-known that what we see is not what enters our eyes, but Read the rest of this entry »

In the ETech panel a few days ago, we dis­cussed some futur­is­tic and some emerg­ing ways in which we can “hack our minds”, mostly from a tech­nol­ogy point of view.

Nei­ther myself nor the other pan­elists thought of sug­gest­ing the most obvi­ous and inex­pen­sive method, proven in thou­sands of research studies.

The secret com­pound?: Belief. Also called “the placebo effect”. Let’s see what Wikipedia says:

Read the rest of this entry »

Please enjoy this brain teaser com­pli­ments of puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. He found this one in the Mensa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Geniuses by Harold Gale.

The Empty Triangle

Ques­tion:
Which fig­ure should be placed in the empty triangle?

This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic. Let us know how you do!

Click here to read the Answer and Solu­tion.

Here is a new brain teaser from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. He found this one in the Mensa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Geniuses by Harold Gale.

Tip­ping the Scales

Ques­tion:
The top two scales are in per­fect bal­ance. How many dia­monds will be needed to bal­ance the bot­tom set?

This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic.

Click here to read the Answer and Solu­tion.

Here is new brain teaser from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. He found this one in the Mensa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Geniuses by Harold Gale.

The Fork in the Road

Ques­tion:
Start at the cen­ter num­ber and col­lect another four num­bers by fol­low­ing the paths shown (and not going back­wards). Add the five num­bers together. What is the low­est num­ber you can score?

This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your plan­ning skills, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic.

Click here to get the Answer.