The Power of Noth­ing: Could study­ing the placebo effect change the way we think about med­i­cine? (The New Yorker):

“For years, Ted Kaptchuk per­formed acupunc­ture at a tiny clinic in Cam­bridge, a few miles from his cur­rent office, at the Har­vard Med­ical School. He opened for busi­ness in 1976, hav­ing just returned from Asia, where he had spent four years hon­ing his craft. Not long after he arrived in Boston, he treated an Armen­ian woman for chronic bron­chi­tis. A few weeks later, the woman returned with her hus­band and told Kaptchuk that he had “cured” her.” Read the rest of this entry »

Neu­ro­sci­en­tists at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Cen­ter (see our pre­vi­ous inter­view with Yaakov Stern on the Cog­ni­tive Reserve) have asked for help in recruit­ing vol­un­teers for an excit­ing clin­i­cal trial. If you are based in New York City, and between the ages of 60 and 75, please con­sider join­ing this study.

More infor­ma­tion below:

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Use it or Lose it?

Train your Brain! Healthy adults between the ages of 60 and 75 liv­ing in NYC are invited to join a study of men­tal fit­ness train­ing. Qual­i­fied indi­vid­u­als will play a scientifically-based video game in our lab­o­ra­tory, and will be tested to deter­mine the effects on atten­tion, mem­ory, and cog­ni­tive performance.

You will earn up to $600 plus trans­porta­tion costs if you com­plete the 3-month program.

This excit­ing study is being per­formed by the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Center.

If inter­ested, con­tact us today: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a quick quiz to test your mem­ory and think­ing skills which should work out your tem­po­ral and frontal lobes. See how you do!

1. - Name the one sport in which nei­ther the spec­ta­tors nor the par­tic­i­pants know the score or the leader until the con­test ends.
2. - What famous North Amer­i­can land­mark is con­stantly mov­ing backward?
3. - Of all veg­eta­bles, only two can live to pro­duce on their own for sev­eral grow­ing sea­sons. All other veg­eta­bles must be replanted every year. What are the only two peren­nial vegetables?
4. - What fruit has its seeds on the outside?
5. - In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bot­tle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bot­tle is gen­uine; it hasn’t been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?
6. - Only three words in Stan­dard Eng­lish begin with the let­ters “dw” and they are all com­mon words. Name two of them.
7. - There are 14 punc­tu­a­tion marks in Eng­lish gram­mar. Can you name at least half of them?
8. - Name the one veg­etable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.
9. - Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet begin­ning with the let­ter “S.”

Click here for the answers.

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.

If you missed Part 1, also writ­ten by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll, you can start there and then come back here to Part 2.

Con­cen­tric Shapes:
The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

Dif­fi­culty: HARDER
Type: MATH (Spa­tial)

Ques­tion:
Imag­ine a square within a cir­cle within a square. The cir­cle just grazes each square at exactly four points. Find the ratio of the area of the larger square to the smaller.

In this puz­zle you are work­ing out many of the same skills as in Part I: spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­ory (tem­po­ral lobes), logic (frontal lobes), plan­ning (frontal lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

This is a very fun link to a series of 20 timed puz­zles put together by the BBC. It should take you about 10 min­utes or less to com­plete.
The Senses Chal­lenge

You also might enjoy their Inter­ac­tive Brain which allows you to explore both the struc­ture and func­tion of your brain. The func­tions will help you learn what areas of your brain you are exer­cis­ing when you do or feel cer­tain things.

They map out for you: anger, con­scious­ness, dis­gust, hap­pi­ness, lan­guage under­stand­ing, move­ment, self aware­ness, smell, taste, touch, breath­ing, coor­di­na­tion, fight or flight, hear­ing, long-term episodic mem­ory, sad­ness, self con­trol, speech pro­duc­tion, thirst and hunger, and vision.

Enjoy!

In honor of Math­e­mat­ics Aware­ness Month 2007: Math­e­mat­ics and the Brain, here is another math­e­mat­i­cal brain ben­der from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll …

The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 1 of 2

Dif­fi­culty: HARD
Type: MATH (Spa­tial)

Ques­tion:
The area of a square is equal to the square of the length of one side. So, for exam­ple, a square with side length 3 has area (3²), or 9. What is the area of a square whose diag­o­nal is length 5?

In this puz­zle you are work­ing out your spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­ory (tem­po­ral lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

Go on to Con­cen­tric Shapes: The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

Here’s a fun puz­zle that a friend gave me over din­ner a few days ago …

How do you cut a cake into eight equal pieces with only three cuts?
the cake in the puz­zle is not nec­es­sar­ily the one pic­tured below

You have to use your men­tal rota­tion and men­tal imagery skills to visu­al­ize the answer for this puz­zle. In doing so, you are using your visual cor­tex in the occip­i­tal lobes, your somatosen­sory cor­tex in your pari­etal lobes, and your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes to help cre­ate and eval­u­ate your hypotheses.

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Answer: Use two cuts to cut the cake into four equal pieces. Use your third cut to cut the four pieces in half hor­i­zon­tally (per­pen­dic­u­lar to the first two cuts).

Here is another mind-bender cre­ated by Wes Car­roll for the Sharp­Brains readers.

Pre­sent­ing …
Dr. Nasty’s Giant Cube

Dif­fi­culty: HARDER
Type: HYBRID (Logic/Spatial)

Ques­tion:
The dia­bol­i­cal Dr. Nasty has turned his Growth Ray on a per­fect cube that used to mea­sure one foot on a side. The new larger cube has twice the sur­face area of the orig­i­nal. Find the vol­ume of the larger cube.

Click to read Hint #1.

Click to read Hint #2.

Click to read Hint #3.

Click to read Hint #4.

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

We are delighted to intro­duce you to Wes Car­roll who has gra­ciously cre­ated a few new puz­zles to bend all those sharp brains out there! Keep check­ing back, as we will con­tinue to release new puz­zles regularly.

Wes aspires to the Renais­sance ideal of excel­lence in mul­ti­ple fields: he is the head of Do The Math pri­vate tutor­ing ser­vices, Puz­zle Mas­ter for the Ask A Sci­en­tist lec­ture series, and an inter­na­tion­ally tour­ing per­former and teacher of music. Find out more at wescarroll.com.

With no fur­ther ado, the first puzzle!

Party For Polyglots

Dif­fi­culty: MEDIUM
Type: LOGIC

Ques­tion:
Of the 100 peo­ple at a recent party, 90 spoke Span­ish, 80 spoke Ital­ian, and 75 spoke Man­darin. At least how many spoke all three languages?

Have you solved it yet? If you are work­ing the prob­lem, mak­ing hypothe­ses, test­ing your ideas, and com­ing up with a solu­tion, you are using your frontal lobes. This is great exer­cise because the frontal lobes fol­low the “last hired, first fired” adage. They are they last areas of your brain to develop and the first to suf­fer the rav­ages of time and stress. So, keep exer­cis­ing! Just like your vol­un­tary mus­cles, reg­u­lar brain work­outs will help you keep more active neu­ronal cir­cuits in your brain which helps you func­tion bet­ter today, as well as cre­ate a pro­tec­tive bar­rier against aging.

Click to read the answer.

Let us know what you think of the puz­zle and please wel­come Wes!