You may have watched the new series Lie To Me, with Tim Roth, based on the work of Paul Ekman.

The sec­ond episode, which you can watch for free via Hulu.com Here, is pretty inter­est­ing, but the best part hap­pens in the begin­ning, so you only need to watch a few min­utes to learn why what are called “lie detec­tors” are noth­ing but biofeed­back sys­tems that mea­sure phys­i­o­log­i­cal anxiety.

Biofeed­back can be a very effec­tive train­ing tool for emo­tional self-regulation and stress man­age­ment, pre­cisely because it enables a faster feedback-based learn­ing loop. Indeed, we are see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of appli­ca­tions in the mar­ket, with names such as EmWave, StressEraser, RES­PeR­ATE, Jour­ney to the Wild Divine, and others.

Sim­ply, don’t believe the tech­nol­ogy is an effec­tive lie detector.

Car­o­line and I wrote an arti­cle on Paul Ekman’s work a cou­ple of years ago — let me repub­lish it now, given his work has made it all the way to main­stream TV!

Paul Ekman has con­ducted exten­sive research on iden­ti­fy­ing emo­tions through facial expres­sions. As part of that research, and as part of the power of dis­ci­pline and train­ing, he learned how to con­sciously manip­u­late 42 facial mus­cles, includ­ing many that in most of us are beyond our con­trol, and even awareness.

In the 60s and 70s when Ekman began look­ing into the uni­ver­sal­ity of facial expres­sions, all the major con­tem­po­rary social sci­en­tists, like Mar­garet Mead, believed that expres­sions were cul­tur­ally learned, not innate. He trav­eled all over the world with pic­tures of peo­ple mak­ing dis­tinct facial expres­sions and found peo­ple in cul­tures every­where, from mod­ern to stone age, agreed on the emo­tion behind the expres­sion. He then turned to Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have the Jan­u­ary edi­tion of our monthly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Bird’s Eye View

Brain fit­ness heads towards its tip­ping point: How do you know when some­thing is mov­ing towards a Glad­wellian tip­ping point? When health insur­ance com­pa­nies and pub­lic pol­icy mak­ers launch sig­nif­i­cant ini­tia­tives. Dr. Ger­ard Finnemore pro­vides a mar­ket overview, based on Sharp­Brains’ client webi­nar held last December.

Ten Reflec­tions on Cog­ni­tive Health and Assess­ments: Here are 10 high­lights from sev­eral stim­u­lat­ing Jan­u­ary events:  Sym­po­sium on Adap­tive Tech­nol­ogy for the Aging (by Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity), Health Blog­gers’ Sum­mit (by Con­sumer Reports), Trau­matic Brain Injury (by Vet­eran Affairs in Palo Alto), and a new Alzheimer’s/ Demen­tia Expert Panel orga­nized by the city of San Francisco.

News and Events

Nin­tendo Brain Age vs. Cross­word Puz­zles: we need much pub­lic edu­ca­tion in order to help con­sumers sep­a­rate real­ity from hope from hype. Nin­tendo is not help­ing, nei­ther is media reporting.

Col­lec­tion of recent news: includ­ing train­ing for senior fit­ness train­ers, reports on the impor­tance of pur­pose,  on older dri­ver safety, and more.

Upcom­ing events: I will be speak­ing soon at the New York Acad­emy of Med­i­cine, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging/ NCOA con­fer­ence, and the Sil­ver­ing Work­force Sum­mit at the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina. Let me know if you are attend­ing any.

Edu­ca­tion and Learning

Learn­ing about Learn­ing: an Inter­view with Joshua Wait­zkin: Scott Barry Kauf­man inter­views “child prodigy” Joshua Wait­zkin on The Art of Learn­ing. Many fas­ci­nat­ing insights, includ­ing “I think los­ing my first National Chess Cham­pi­onship was the great­est thing that ever hap­pened to me, because it helped me avoid many of the psy­cho­log­i­cal traps…(associated with being called a “child prodigy”)”.

Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tional intel­li­gence: Daniel Gole­man intro­duces edu­ca­tors and par­ents to a new book that “adds an impor­tant tool to the emo­tional intel­li­gence kit: mind­ful­ness, a moment-by-moment aware­ness of one’s inter­nal state and exter­nal environment.”

Resources

Top 10 Cog­ni­tive Health and Brain Fit­ness Books: Here you have The 10 Most Pop­u­lar Brain Fit­ness & Cog­ni­tive Health Books, based on book pur­chases by Sharp­Brains’ read­ers dur­ing 2008.

10-Question Pro­gram Eval­u­a­tion Check­list: To help con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als nav­i­gate through the grow­ing num­ber of pro­grams mak­ing “brain fit­ness” or “brain train­ing” claims, we pub­lished last year this Eval­u­a­tion Check­list. Now we are mak­ing the Check­list avail­able as a Book­mark given recent requests by uni­ver­si­ties and con­fer­ence organizers.

Brain Teaser

Brain Teaser to Exer­cise your Mem­ory and Rea­son­ing Skills: Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon offers a stim­u­lat­ing teaser that not only helps exer­cise our brain but also edu­cates us on how and why the same activ­ity may exer­cise dif­fer­ent brains dif­fer­ently — depend­ing on where we are from.

(Editor’s note: Daniel Gole­man is now con­duct­ing a great series of audio inter­views includ­ing one with Richard David­son on Train­ing the Brain: Cul­ti­vat­ing Emo­tional Skills. We are hon­ored to bring you this guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

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Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tional intelligence

By Daniel Goleman

The scene: a first-grade class­room in a Man­hat­tan school. Not just any class­room this one has lots of Spe­cial Ed stu­dents, who are very hyper­ac­tive. So the room is a whirlpool of fren­zied activ­ity. The teacher tells the kids that they’re going to lis­ten to a CD. The kids quiet down a bit.

Then they get pretty still as the CD starts, and a man’s voice asks the kids to lie down on their backs, arms at their sides, and get a “breath­ing buddy,” like a stuffed ani­mal, who will sit on their stom­achs and help them be aware of their breath­ing. The voice takes the chil­dren through a series of breath­ing and body aware­ness exer­cises, and the kids man­age to calm down and stay focused through the entire six min­utes, which ends with them wig­gling their toes.

“You’ve just learned how to make your body feel calm and relaxed,” says the voice. “And you can do this again any time you want.”

The voice on the CD is mine, though I’m read­ing the words of Linda Lantieri, who has pio­neered pub­lic school pro­grams in social and emo­tional learn­ing that have been adopted worldwide.

Her newest pro­gram adds an impor­tant tool to the emo­tional intel­li­gence kit: mind­ful­ness, a moment-by-moment aware­ness of one’s inter­nal state and exter­nal envi­ron­ment. In a new book, Build­ing Emo­tional Intel­li­gence, which comes with the CD, Lantieri uses mind­ful­ness train­ing to enhance con­cen­tra­tion and atten­tion among kids, and to help them learn to bet­ter calm them­selves. Build­ing Emo­tional Intel­li­gence comes with instruc­tions that explain how teach­ers and par­ents can adapt Latieri’s exer­cises to kids at dif­fer­ent age lev­els (five to seven, eight to 11, or 12 and up) and pro­vides detailed expla­na­tions of each exercise.

Lantieri’s project exem­pli­fies the ways we can build on sci­en­tific insights to help chil­dren mas­ter the skills of emo­tional intel­li­gence. As Richard David­son, founder of the Lab­o­ra­tory for Affec­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin, explained to me in Read the rest of this entry »

A reader and writer sent us over the week­end the arti­cle below as “an OpEd sub­mis­sion”. We are not a news­pa­per, and don’t have a for­mal OpEd sec­tion, but are delighted to pub­lish thought­ful, research-based pieces on top­ics related to life­long cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment and health.

Here you are:

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Phi­los­o­phy as the Miss­ing Link An Eye-Opening Audit of Our School’s Cur­ricu­lum
By: Kim­berly Wickham

The ques­tion might be asked, “Why would any­one want to teach phi­los­o­phy to pre-adolescent chil­dren?” but there are very good rea­sons why one might want to take on such a lofty task. I am not sug­gest­ing that the his­tory of phi­los­o­phy would be par­tic­u­larly per­ti­nent for a young child to learn, but there is sub­stan­tial evi­dence to sup­port the devel­op­ment of an already nat­ural ten­dency towards philo­soph­i­cal thought. Some may think that the pre-adolescents haven’t got the cog­ni­tive devel­op­men­tal abil­ity to wrap their minds around such an elu­sive and sub­jec­tive study as phi­los­o­phy. How­ever, devel­op­ing this skill has shown long term pos­i­tive effects. These effects range from devel­op­ing crit­i­cal think­ing skills and cog­ni­tive abil­ity to rais­ing emo­tional matu­rity and encour­ag­ing the child’s sense of secu­rity within his or her world.

For years there has been an empha­sis on cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal aspects of chil­drens devel­op­ment, but recently more atten­tion is being placed on both the social and emo­tional aspects of a child’s devel­op­ment. It is becom­ing rec­og­nized that a child’s emo­tional matu­rity has a big impact on their abil­ity to learn and process infor­ma­tion. While that, at first blush, may seem Read the rest of this entry »

Schools are begin­ning to offer an increas­ing num­ber of courses in social and emo­tional intel­li­gence, teach­ing stu­dents how to bet­ter under­stand their own emo­tions and the emo­tions of others.

It sounds warm and fuzzy, but it’s a trend backed up by hard data. Today, new stud­ies reveal that teach­ing kids to be emo­tion­ally and socially com­pe­tent boosts their aca­d­e­mic achieve­ment. More pre­cisely, when schools offer stu­dents pro­grams in social and emo­tional learn­ing, their achieve­ment scores gain around 11 per­cent­age points.

That’s what I heard at a forum held last Decem­ber by the Col­lab­o­ra­tive for Aca­d­e­mic, Social, and Emo­tional Learn­ing (CASEL). (Dis­clo­sure: I’m a co-founder of CASEL.) Roger Weiss­berg, the organization’s direc­tor, gave a pre­view of a mas­sive study run by researchers at Loy­ola Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois, which ana­lyzed eval­u­a­tions of more than 233,000 stu­dents across the country.

Social-emotional learn­ing, they dis­cov­ered, helps stu­dents Read the rest of this entry »

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

After many months of work we have just released our inau­gural report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 for cor­po­rate exec­u­tives, health care pro­fes­sion­als, and investors. This report defines the emerg­ing brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket and ana­lyzes the size and trends of its four cus­tomer seg­ments. For top 10 high­lights and to pur­chase the report at a 10% dis­count (before March 20th) click here: Report: The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008

Brain Fit­ness News and Events

NEWS FEATURE-Brain fit­ness seen as hot indus­try of the future (Reuters 03/12): The most com­pre­hen­sive arti­cle we have seen so far cov­er­ing this emerg­ing field, based on our mar­ket report and with orig­i­nal report­ing. Highly rec­om­mended read.

Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Gole­man requires no intro­duc­tion. Per­son­ally, of all his books I have read, the one I found most stim­u­lat­ing was Destruc­tive Emo­tions: A Sci­en­tific Dia­logue With the Dalai Lama, a superb overview of what emo­tions are and how we can put them to good use. He is now con­duct­ing a great series of audio inter­views includ­ing one with George Lucas on Edu­cat­ing Hearts and Minds: Rethink­ing Education.

We are hon­ored to bring you a guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine, a UC-Berkeley-based quar­terly mag­a­zine that high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tific research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Enjoy!

- Alvaro

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The Power of Mindsight

How can we free our­selves from pris­ons of the past?

– By Daniel Goleman

When you were young, which of these did you feel more often?

a) No mat­ter what I do, my par­ents love me;

b) I can’t seem to please my par­ents, no mat­ter what I do;

c) My par­ents don’t really notice me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Ekman has con­ducted exten­sive research on iden­ti­fy­ing emo­tions through facial expres­sions. As part of that research, and as part of the power of dis­ci­pline and train­ing, he learned how to con­sciously manip­u­late 42 facial mus­cles, includ­ing many that in most of us are beyond our con­trol, and even awareness.

In the 60s and 70s when Ekman began look­ing into the uni­ver­sal­ity of facial expres­sions, all the major con­tem­po­rary social sci­en­tists, like Mar­garet Mead, believed that expres­sions were cul­tur­ally learned, not innate. He pro­ceeded trav­eled all over the world with pic­tures of peo­ple mak­ing dis­tinct facial expres­sions and found peo­ple in cul­tures every­where, from mod­ern to stone age, agreed on the emo­tion behind the expres­sion. He then turned to study­ing the pro­duc­tion of these expres­sions and the 43 facial mus­cles that can cre­ate 10,000 expres­sions, which form the basis of his training.

He found seven uni­ver­sal emo­tions with unique facial expres­sion. The emo­tions are: anger, fear, sad­ness, dis­gust, hap­pi­ness, sur­prise, and con­tempt. At least five of these are shared with non-human pri­mates as well. Inter­est­ingly, the smile is the eas­i­est expres­sion to rec­og­nize, and the eas­i­est to iden­tify from afar. These emo­tions have a spe­cific Read the rest of this entry »

The Finan­cial Times has a fun inter­view today as part of their “Lunch with the FT” series.

Daniel Gole­man is the author of best­seller Emo­tional Intel­li­gence and is now pro­mot­ing his recent book Social Intel­li­gence.

An quote from the interview:

- The jour­nal­ist asks, “So how do the rest of us get better?”.

- The answer, he says, is very sim­ple: by listening.

Lis­ten­ing poorly is the com­mon cold of social intel­li­gence. And it’s being made worse by tech­nol­ogy. To have a human moment, you need to be fully present. You have to be away from your lap­top, you put down your Black­Berry, you end your day­dream and you pay full atten­tion to the per­son you’re with. It may sound rudi­men­tary, but think about how often we just keep mul­ti­task­ing and half pay atten­tion. You can over­come that by becom­ing mind­ful of what is happening.

Keep read­ing the FT arti­cle Poetry in emo­tion.

And Social Intel­li­gence and Mir­ror Neurons