Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: Read the rest of this entry »

Darold Tre­f­fert, M.D. is con­sid­ered one of the fore­most experts on savan­tism in the world.

Dr. Tre­f­fert has pub­lished two books on savant syn­drome: “Extra­or­di­nary Peo­ple: Under­stand­ing Savant Syn­drome” in 2006 and “Islands of Genius: The Boun­ti­ful Mind of the Autis­tic, Acquired and Sud­den Savant” in 2010. […] In his efforts to raise pub­lic under­stand­ing about autism and savant syn­drome he has reg­u­larly appeared on pro­grams such as 60 Min­utes, Oprah, Today, CBS Evening News and many oth­ers. Dr. Tre­f­fert was a tech­ni­cal con­sul­tant to the award-winning movie Rain Man that made “autis­tic savant” house­hold terms and he main­tains a very pop­u­lar web­site at www.savantsyndrome.com hosted by the Wis­con­sin Med­ical Society.

Dr. Tre­f­fert was gra­cious enough to have a wide-ranging con­ver­sa­tion with me. Over the course of a few days, we had a delight­ful time chat­ting about autism, savan­tism, genius, nature, nur­ture, intel­li­gence, cre­ativ­ity, lessons learned, recent advances, and the future.[…] In my view, this inter­view demon­strates quite clearly the need for more com­pas­sion and research on all dif­fer­ent kinds of minds and ways of achiev­ing great­ness. In this sev­enth part, we dis­cussed the inner savant in all of us.

SCOTT: A com­mon theme run­ning through­out your books is the idea that hid­den brain poten­tial and mem­ory capac­ity may lie buried and dor­mant within each of us. Read the rest of this entry »

Most par­ents want the best for their chil­dren and hope they will be healthy, happy and smart indi­vid­u­als. And most par­ents won­der what they should do to make sure this hap­pens. In Brain Rules for Baby, John Med­ina (author of Brain Rules), pro­vides a good sum­mary of cog­ni­tive sci­ence find­ings that shed light on how a baby’s brain grows from 0 to 5.  In this book you learn as much about fac­tors inher­ent to a child that par­ents can­not con­trol (the seeds) as about fac­tors that par­ents can con­trol (the soil). What fol­lows is an excerpt from the “Smart Baby: Seeds” chap­ter in which John Med­ina describes the many “ingre­di­ents that make up the human intel­li­gence stew”.

2. Self Control

A healthy, well­-adjusted preschooler sits down at a table in front of two giant, freshly baked choco­late chip cook­ies. It’s not a kitchen table—it’s Wal­ter Mischel’s Stan­ford lab dur­ing the late 1960s. The smell is heav­enly. “You see these cook­ies?” Mis­chel says. “You can eat just one of them right now if you want, but if you wait, you can eat both. I have to go away for five min­utes. If I return and you have not eaten any­thing, I will let you have both cook­ies. If you eat one while I’m gone, the bar­gain is off and you don’t get the sec­ond one. Do we have a deal?” The child nods. The researcher leaves.

What does the child do? Read the rest of this entry »

A fas­ci­nat­ing New York Time arti­cle on solv­ing puz­zles: Why you do it, how you do it, and what’s going on in your brain while you do it.

The appeal of puz­zles goes far deeper than the dopamine-reward rush of find­ing a solu­tion. The very idea of doing a cross­word or a Sudoku puz­zle typ­i­cally shifts the brain into an open, play­ful state.

There are dif­fer­ent ways to solve a puz­zle: an ana­lyt­i­cal way of trial and errors and an “insight” or cre­ative way.  Read the rest of this entry »

Any­one who knows me knows that my favorite pas­time is nap­ping. In Col­lege, I would come back to my dorm room, and like clock­work, would take a nap. My best friend in Eng­land, who got quite a kick out of my pas­sion for nap­ping, once tried to per­suade me to drink a cup of tea after lunch instead of tak­ing my cus­tom­ary nap. I really tried, but I soon gave in to my nap crav­ings. Some­times I feel like I really need to re-charge my brain batteries.

Well, now sci­ence is on my side. I just love this new study, which was pre­sented by Matthew Walker, assis­tant pro­fes­sor at UC Berke­ley, at the annual meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) con­fer­ence in San Diego this past Sun­day (Feb. 2010).

Walker and his col­leagues Bryce A. Man­der and Sangeetha San­thanam split up a batch of 39 healthy young adults into two groups. One group napped, the other did not.

At noon, both groups took a learn­ing task thought to recruit the hip­pocam­pus. The hip­pocam­pus is a region of the brain known to play an impor­tant role in the for­ma­tion of new mem­o­ries. Over the past few years, var­i­ous researchers have found that fact-based mem­o­ries are tem­porar­ily stored in the hip­pocam­pus before other regions of the brain can oper­ate on the con­tent, espe­cially the regions of the brain respon­si­ble for higher-order rea­son­ing and think­ing.  At this point in the exper­i­ment, both groups showed sim­i­lar lev­els of performance.

Then, at 2pm, the nap group took a 90-minute nap while the no-nap group stayed awake, pre­sum­ably watch­ing the nap group enjoy­ing their nap. After nap-time both groups then took more learn­ing tests. The nap­pers did bet­ter on the tasks than those who stayed awake, demon­strat­ing their higher capac­ity to learn. Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: con­trib­u­tor Scott Barry Kauf­man recently inter­viewed Daniel Tam­met, one of the 100 known prodi­gious savants liv­ing at the present time. Their in-depth con­ver­sa­tion –sum­mary and links fol­low Scott’s reflec­tions below– pro­voked a pow­er­ful reac­tion in Scott’s mind, as you are about to read).

Last night I was eat­ing din­ner with my par­ents back in my home­town in Philadel­phia. I was telling them about my inter­view with Daniel Tam­met, and how I was work­ing on a post about my reflec­tions on the inter­view. My father, who reads every­thing I write (which can be awk­ward some­times!), looked at me and said, plainly and sim­ply, “I see a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties between you and Daniel, Scott.” Those words were a kind of crys­tal­liz­ing moment for me. I sup­pose I knew at an intu­itive level that this inter­view was so mean­ing­ful to me, and I was aware that I had this great drive to get the com­plete inter­view out there for peo­ple to read, but with that com­ment by my Dad, it really hit me why the expe­ri­ence was so mean­ing­ful: this inter­view really was personal.

To the best of my knowl­edge, I don’t have Asperger’s syn­drome. But I did have an audi­tory learn­ing dis­abil­ity grow­ing up that made me feel like an out­sider most of my early child­hood, a feel­ing which remains to this day. My inter­view with Daniel was so pro­found to me because I think it really made it crys­tal clear to me, at least clearer than ever before, that what­ever the “dis­or­der”- learn­ing dis­abil­ity, per­son­al­ity dis­or­der, atten­tion deficit dis­or­der, mood dis­or­der, anx­i­ety dis­or­der, obses­sive com­pul­sive dis­or­der, etc. — or life cir­cum­stance, any­one whose mar­gin­al­ity put them on a dif­fer­ent path from the rest of the kids, from the rest of the adults, from the rest of soci­ety, are united in that feel­ing of being dif­fer­ent. Daniel Tammet’s feel­ing of a great lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion grow­ing up spoke to me, for sure. But I’m sure it also spoke to a great many peo­ple read­ing the interview.

There is a bit of Daniel Tam­met in all of us. I think all of us, at one time or another, have felt dif­fer­ent in a par­tic­u­lar con­text, and have felt the intense con­flict to simul­ta­ne­ously want to fit in while also want­ing to just be accepted for being dif­fer­ent. Not all of us may be able to cal­cu­late pi to as many places as Daniel can, or can auto­mat­i­cally asso­ciate num­bers with col­ors, or can write both prose and poetry as beau­ti­fully as he does, or can paint as he does. But what my inter­view with Daniel taught me is that it doesn’t mat­ter if you can’t do every­thing he does. Life is not about delib­er­ately prac­tic­ing your­self down some­one else’s path. It’s about stay­ing true to your­self at all times, and being fully open to going down your own unique, unplanned, and unpre­dictable path.

Researchers have asked me whether, after my inter­view with Daniel, I think he is a “fraud”. I sup­pose they want to know whether he really is “autis­tic” or whether he really can truly do all the mind tricks he appears to be capa­ble of. They saw his inter­view on Let­ter­man, where he was very charis­matic and socially engag­ing and they won­der whether he still has Asperger’s syn­drome, since he didn’t seem to dis­play all of the symp­toms on the show.

I, too, saw the Let­ter­man inter­view. What I saw in that inter­view was a very smart per­son who was capa­ble of being social. There is no doubt that Daniel has gone through a great trans­for­ma­tion over the years, becom­ing more socially adept and out­go­ing. He has learned quite a bit about life, love, and rela­tion­ships. But still, talk­ing on the phone with him, there were moments when I could tell he was strug­gling a bit to under­stand some of my more ambigu­ous phrases, that he still processed some of the things I said lit­er­ally. Whether he would still be labelled “Asperger’s” today though, is in many ways miss­ing the larger point.

The point is that there is some­thing it means to be Daniel. Daniel was born with a unique mind, wired in a cer­tain way, which con­tributed sig­nif­i­cantly to how he sees the world. He has been able to com­pen­sate quite a bit, but there still remains a core to him that makes him unique. And I saw absolutely no dis­hon­esty in my inter­view with him– in fact, what I had the honor of wit­ness­ing was one of the most truest indi­vid­u­als I’ve ever met in my entire life, a per­son who lives his life always try­ing to stay true to him­self in a soci­ety that labels him as dif­fer­ent. In a lot of ways, a lot of peo­ple in this world every day of their own lives are try­ing to do the very same thing.

Through­out the inter­view, Daniel was very crit­i­cal of IQ test­ing and the study of indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences. I fully appre­ci­ate where his cri­tiques were com­ing from. I agree with him that many things we do serve to reduce peo­ple to just one dimen­sion, and in the case of a poorly admin­is­tered IQ test, reduc­ing a per­son to just a num­ber. But as I’ve reviewed recently, the field of IQ test­ing is rapidly evolv­ing. The major aim of most mod­ern day IQ test mak­ers I talk to is not to reduce, but to broaden– to iden­tify a par­tic­u­lar individual’s unique pat­tern of cog­ni­tive strengths and weak­nesses and to cus­tom tai­lor an edu­ca­tional pro­gram for that per­son. This is a goal I think Daniel would agree with.

I think Daniel also under­es­ti­mated the impor­tance of inves­ti­gat­ing indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences more gen­er­ally. I study indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in my research pro­gram. The rea­son why I do so is because I fully believe that’s where most of the inter­est­ing aspects of human nature lie. It’s so fas­ci­nat­ing to me how we can all vary so much from one another– on so many attrib­utes like phys­i­cal fea­tures, per­son­al­ity, intel­li­gence, cre­ativ­ity, style of think­ing, life expe­ri­ences, etc.– and yet at the end of the day we are all part of the same species. We all have sim­i­lar fears, desires, and foibles. I think the study of indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences is impor­tant– not as a way of reduc­ing peo­ple– but as a way of broad­en­ing the spec­trum of ways peo­ple can dif­fer and the ways in which both innate dis­po­si­tions and cul­ture shapes who we are.

It is clear from my inter­view with Daniel that he really was born with a unique brain wiring. It wasn’t solely delib­er­ate prac­tice that got Daniel Tam­met to Daniel Tam­met. It was the unique con­stel­la­tion of poten­tials that the body named “Daniel Tam­met” was born with, and that, through a series of for­tu­nate oppor­tu­ni­ties, allowed him to more fully express and real­ize his poten­tial than could have eas­ily been the case — unfor­tu­nately, many peo­ple have life cir­cum­stances that hin­der them from real­iz­ing their poten­tial, and they erro­neously think that their cur­rent life is all that is pos­si­ble for them­selves. If any­thing, I’d imag­ine most of Daniel’s delib­er­ate prac­tice went toward try­ing to learn things that come more nat­u­rally to oth­ers (such as how to rec­og­nize faces), just so he could bet­ter fit in, than learn­ing things that already came more nat­u­rally to him­self (such as danc­ing with numbers).

In this new year, this new decade, and well into the future of human­ity, let’s all try a lit­tle bit harder to appre­ci­ate each other’s dif­fer­ences. And by doing so, let’s also remind our­selves to remain true to our­selves, despite soci­ety. Like Daniel Tammet.

(Editor’s Note: what fol­lows is a sum­mary of the in-depth con­ver­sa­tion between Daniel Tam­met and Scott Barry Kauf­man. Links to whole series below).

Inter­view Cor­ner: Daniel Tam­met
An autis­tic savant joins the wider world.

PROFESSION: Writer

CLAIM TO FAME: Vividly describes autis­tic savan­tism from the inside

Although their unusual abil­i­ties com­pel con­sid­er­able atten­tion, there are fewer than 50 autis­tic savants world­wide. Daniel Tam­met is one of them. Over 30 years, the London-born math­e­mat­i­cal and lan­guage whiz has trans­formed from an awk­ward, reclu­sive boy into a con­fi­dent adult. His quiet, pri­vate life of strict rou­tines gave way in 2006, when his mem­oir Born on a Blue Day became a best-seller, neces­si­tat­ing travel, self-promotion, and talk show appear­ances. His lat­est book, Embrac­ing the Wide Sky, is a sci­en­tific explo­ration of his extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ties (recit­ing pi to 22,514 places, learn­ing to speak Ice­landic in a week) and a tour of autism.

Scott: How have you com­pen­sated for the chal­lenges of Asperger’s?

Daniel: Grow­ing up, I would have to watch the other chil­dren and learn from my mis­takes. I would have to push myself to over­come the things most peo­ple don’t have to think about. Brush­ing my teeth was very dif­fi­cult because Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to the 70th edi­tion of Encephalon, the blog car­ni­val that offers some of the best neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy blog posts every other week.

—

Mys­ter­ies of Brain and Mind

—

On Neu­rons, Jour­neys, and Chem­i­cal Friends

—

On Brain Functions

—

Fron­tiers in Perception

—

Next edi­tion will be hosted by Neu­roan­thro­pol­ogy on Mon­day, May 25th. If you can’t wait until to read more, you may be inter­ested in the new in-depth fea­ture, Cog­ni­tive Monthly, offered by Cog­ni­tive Daily blog for $2/ month. This month’s issue, “The Illu­sion of The­ater,” dis­cusses the “remark­able sci­ence behind what the­atri­cal pro­fes­sion­als seem, to laypeo­ple, to do intu­itively: cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that encour­ages us to believe that what we see on stage is a true rep­re­sen­ta­tion of reality.”

Today we’ll dis­cuss some of the cog­ni­tive impli­ca­tions of “always on” work­places and lifestyles via a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Mag­gie Jack­son, an award-winning author and jour­nal­ist. Her lat­est book, Dis­tracted: The Ero­sion of Atten­tion and the Com­ing Dark Age, describes the impli­ca­tions of our busy work and life envi­ron­ments and offers impor­tant reflec­tions to help us thrive in them.

This is a 2-part inter­view con­ducted via e-mail: we will pub­lish the con­tin­u­a­tion on Thurs­day March 12th.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: New York Times colum­nist David Brooks said last year that we live in a Cog­ni­tive Age, and encour­aged read­ers to be aware of this change and try and adapt to the new real­ity. Can you explain the cog­ni­tive demands of today’s work­places that weren’t there 30–40 years ago?

Mag­gie Jack­son: Our work­places have changed enor­mously in recent decades, and it’s easy to point to the Black­berry or the lap­top as the sources of our cul­ture of speed and over­load and dis­trac­tion. But it’s impor­tant to note first that our 24/7, frag­mented work cul­ture has deeper roots. With the first high-tech inven­tions, such as the cin­ema, phono­graph, tele­graph, rail, and car, came rad­i­cal changes in human expe­ri­ence of time and space. Dis­tance was shat­tered  long before email and red-eye flights. Tele­graph oper­a­tors  not online daters  expe­ri­enced the first vir­tual love affairs, as evi­denced by the 1890s novel Wired Love. Now, we wres­tle with the effects of changes seeded long ago.

Today, the cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal demands on work­ers are steep. Con­sider 24/7 liv­ing. At great cost to our health, we oper­ate in a sleep­less, hur­ried world, ignor­ing cues of sun and sea­son, the Indus­trial Age inven­tions of the week­end and vaca­tion, and the rhythms of biol­ogy. We try to break the fet­ters of time and live like per­pet­ual motion machines. That’s one rea­son why we feel over­loaded and stressed con­di­tions that are cor­ro­sive to problem-solving and clear thinking.

At the same time, our tech­nolo­gies allow us access to mil­lions of infor­ma­tion bites pro­duc­ing an abun­dance of data that is both won­drous and dan­ger­ous. Unless we have the will, dis­ci­pline and frame­works for turn­ing this infor­ma­tion into wis­dom, we remain stuck on the sur­face of Read the rest of this entry »

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, Read the rest of this entry »

Back in July, I wrote a post enti­tled 10 Brain Tips To Teach and Learn. Those tips apply to stu­dents of any age, includ­ing adults, for ide­ally adults are still learn­ers. Why is adult learn­ing rel­e­vant in a brain-focused blog, you may wonder:

The short of it

As we age, our brain:

still forms new brain cells
can change its struc­ture & func­tion
finds pos­i­tive stress can be ben­e­fi­cial; neg­a­tive stress can be detri­men­tal
can thrive on novel chal­lenges
needs to be exer­cised, just like our bodies

The long of it

Adults may have a ten­dency to get set in their ways have been doing it this way for a long time and it works, so why change? Turns out, though, that change can be a way to keep aging brains healthy. At the April Learn­ing & the Brain con­fer­ence, the theme of which was neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, I attended sev­eral ses­sions on adult learn­ing. Here’s what the experts are saying.

Read the rest of this entry »