Iron­i­cally, Marc at the blog titled Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cally Chal­lenged has just released one of the best edi­tions of Encephalon blog car­ni­val. Pay a visit only when you have some time to spare with a col­lec­tion of excel­lent and very well pre­sented neu­ro­science, med­i­cine and psy­chol­ogy blog posts, on top­ics rang­ing from fMRI to gene ther­apy and neuroplasticity.

Visit #49 Encephalon edi­tion at Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cally Challenged.

Also, you may enjoy tak­ing a look at past edi­tions and cal­en­dar for future ones at Encephalon home page: Encephalon Archives & Cal­en­dar.

We had the for­tune to inter­view Dr. Brett Steen­barger on Enhanc­ing Trader Per­for­mance and The Psy­chol­ogy of Trad­ing as we launched our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series.

Below, Expert Con­trib­u­tor Dr. Jan­ice Dorn pro­vides an in-depth brain-based dis­cus­sion of the topic, con­clud­ing that “The brain is the most pow­er­ful struc­ture in the known uni­verse and the only trad­ing tool that the trader needs to become an expert.”

No mat­ter whether you are a Pro or Ama­teur Trader…this will cer­tainly exer­cise your brain! (Dr. Dorn is prepar­ing more arti­cles on trad­ing per­for­mance and the brain…so stay tuned).

This is Your Brain On Trading

– By Dr. Jan­ice Dorn

The open­ing bell sounds, and sixty mil­lion traders enter the great­est arena in the world to do bat­tle with each other. They put their money, beliefs and skills on the line as they make deci­sions to buy and sell. Wel­come to the finan­cial mar­kets where bil­lions of dol­lars are won and lost every day. Volatil­ity com­pels all to engage their brains in the con­tin­u­ous process of deci­sion mak­ing. What sep­a­rates the win­ning from los­ing traders is the way they use their most pow­er­ful trad­ing tool—the human brain.

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Daniel Lende and Greg Downey run the though-provoking Neu­roan­thro­pol­ogy blog. Daniel also teaches a class at Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame, and he asked his stu­dents to sub­mit group-based blog posts in lieu of the tra­di­tional final essays. He explains more on Why A Final Essay When We Can Do This?.

Below you have a spec­tac­u­lar post writ­ten by 4 of his stu­dents. They show how brain imag­ing is start­ing to pro­vide a win­dow into the plas­tic­ity (glos­sary here) of our brains, and how our very own actions impact them. For good and for bad.

Under­stand­ing Brain Imaging

— By Chris Dud­ley, Matt Gasperetti, Mikey Nar­vaez, and Sarah Walorski

Do you remem­ber the anti-drug pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment from the 1980s that showed an egg fry­ing in a hot pan which rep­re­sented your brain on drugs?

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Well, the idea that you can just pop a pill to improve your mem­ory and atten­tion lost some ground today.

The Asso­ci­ated Press released an arti­cle on DHEA, a steroid pre­cur­sor to testos­terone and estro­gen used to improve ath­letic per­for­mance, increase sex drive, and reduce fat as well as fight dia­betes and heart dis­ease. The con­clu­sion of a two-year study at the Mayo Clinic in Min­nesota and Uni­ver­sity of Padua in Italy was that it did not improve strength, phys­i­cal per­for­mance, or other mea­sures of health. The pos­i­tive news was: Read the rest of this entry »