Wel­come to the 61st edi­tion of Encephalon, the blog car­ni­val that offers some of the best neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy blog posts every other week.

We do have an excel­lent set of arti­cles today. cov­er­ing much ground. Enjoy the reading:

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Neu­ro­science and Society

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Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and Neu­rocog­ni­tive Health Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have a col­lec­tion of recent news cov­er­age on brain heath, fit­ness and train­ing topics:

1– Great Mem­ory Spe­cial in National Geo­graphic, including

- Inter­ac­tive 3D map of the brain

- Mem­ory Game

2– Fas­ci­nat­ing What the Bea­t­les Gave Sci­ence, by Sharon Beg­ley at Newsweek

- “Even in novices, med­i­ta­tion leaves its mark. An eight-week course in com­pas­sion med­i­ta­tion, in which vol­un­teers focus on the wish that all beings be free from suf­fer­ing, shifted brain activ­ity from the right pre­frontal cor­tex to the left, a pat­tern asso­ci­ated with a greater sense of well-being.”

3– One of the best edi­tions of Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Mind

- Solv­ing the IQ Puz­zle “The 20th cen­tury saw the Flynn effect: mas­sive gains in IQ from one gen­er­a­tion to another. Now Flynn explains why”

- Anx­i­ety and Alzheimer- A life­time of stress could lead to mem­ory prob­lems and dis­ease: “Over a period of up to 12 years, vol­un­teers who were anxiety-prone had a 40 per­cent higher risk of devel­op­ing mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment than more easy­go­ing indi­vid­u­als did. Mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment is thought to be a pre­cur­sor for Alzheimer’s.”

4– Exer­cise builds strong brains, too — USATODAY.com

- “Phillip Tom­porowski, a study co-author and exer­cise psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­sity of Geor­gia in Athens, says exer­cise “may well improve the under­ly­ing men­tal processes that are involved in a lot of behav­iors and aca­d­e­mic tasks.”

5– Daily com­puter game boosts maths– BBC, report­ing pre­lim­i­nary results from a small pilot

- “Play­ing a daily com­puter game has helped a class of pri­mary school chil­dren improve their maths and con­cen­tra­tion, a study says.”

6– ADHD and Brain Devel­op­ment– Wash­ing­ton Post

- “Devel­op­ing more slowly in ADHD young­sters — the lag can be as much as three years — are brain regions that sup­press inap­pro­pri­ate actions and thoughts, focus atten­tion, remem­ber things from moment to moment, work for reward, and con­trol movement.”

Meme: “The term “meme” (rhyming with “theme”), coined in 1976 by the biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins, refers to a “unit of cul­tural infor­ma­tion” which can prop­a­gate from one mind to another in a man­ner anal­o­gous to genes.

If you haven’t read Dawkins’ clas­sic book The Self­ish Gene…it is never too late to enjoy it!

There are some “memes” float­ing now around blog­gers and I have been “tagged” (included) by 2 of them. So here you have:

1) On good daily habits: this is the orig­i­nal post, and here are Hueina’s My Sim­ply Suc­cess­ful Secrets.

My “Sim­ply Sucess­ful Secrets” habits that I fol­low close to every day, in more or less that sequence:

• Per­form 10–15 min­utes of Read the rest of this entry »

What an event yes­ter­day night. My wife and I were for­tu­nate to visit the Google Cam­pus and attend the Sixth Annual North Amer­i­can Fel­low­ship Induc­tion Pro­gram of Ashoka: Inno­va­tors for the Pub­lic, a social ven­ture fund where we have been involved for a num­ber of years, and thanks to which (thanks Michele!) my wife and I met in the first place.

18 new Ashoka Fellows/ social entre­pre­neurs were elected, and after a fun cock­tail recep­tion the cer­e­mony began. Sergei Brin (Google Co-founder), Sheryl Sand­berg (who helped launch Google Foun­da­tion and google.org), Salar Kaman­gar (the mind behind AdWords) gave intro­duc­tory remarks. Salar explained how he first heard of Ashoka (through the book How to Change the World, by David Born­stein) and how he saw tremen­dous sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ashoka and Google: both Read the rest of this entry »