Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

We are glad to wel­come you to our blog car­ni­val. After a short hia­tus, Encephalon is back and gath­er­ing steam. We have pre­pared this “revival” edi­tion just for you, so you can be well informed and impress us all dur­ing the upcom­ing Sci­encede­bate 2008.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the ques­tions posed by 24 blog­gers on neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy issues. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Big Ques­tions

Do I deserve to vote even if I don’t have Free Will? (Marc at Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cally Challenged).

If cul­ture sculpts our brains, what can our brains do to refine our cul­ture first? (Stephanie at Brains On Purpose).

Is God more than a fly­ing brain? (Jes­sica at bioephemera).

Is Your brain really read­ing This? (Pete at Brain Hammer).

A Few Intru­sive Questions

Do you play any musi­cal instru­ment? (Megan at SharpBrains).

Read the rest of this entry »

In 1895, this will by Alfred Nobel cre­ated the Nobel Prizes. One page worth read­ing, with this core paragraph:

“The whole of my remain­ing real­iz­able estate shall be dealt with in the fol­low­ing way: the cap­i­tal, invested in safe secu­ri­ties by my execu­tors, shall con­sti­tute a fund, the inter­est on which shall be annu­ally dis­trib­uted in the form of prizes to those who, dur­ing the pre­ced­ing year, shall have con­ferred the great­est ben­e­fit on mankind. The said inter­est shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be appor­tioned as fol­lows: one part to the per­son who shall have made the most impor­tant dis­cov­ery or inven­tion within the field of physics; one part to the per­son who shall have made the most impor­tant chem­i­cal dis­cov­ery or improve­ment; one part to the per­son who shall have made the most impor­tant dis­cov­ery within the domain of phys­i­ol­ogy or med­i­cine; one part to the per­son who shall have pro­duced in the field of lit­er­a­ture the most out­stand­ing work in an ideal direc­tion; and one part to the per­son who shall have done the most or the best work for fra­ter­nity between nations, for the abo­li­tion or reduc­tion of stand­ing armies and for the hold­ing and pro­mo­tion of peace con­gresses. The prizes for physics and chem­istry shall be awarded by the Swedish Acad­emy of Sci­ences; that for phys­i­o­log­i­cal or med­ical work by the Car­o­line Insti­tute in Stock­holm; that for lit­er­a­ture by the Acad­emy in Stock­holm, and that for cham­pi­ons of peace by a com­mit­tee of five per­sons to be elected by the Nor­we­gian Stort­ing. It is my express wish that in award­ing the prizes no con­sid­er­a­tion what­ever shall be given to the nation­al­ity of the can­di­dates, but that the most wor­thy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scan­di­na­vian or not.”

The Nobel Foun­da­tion has started to announce 2007 Lau­re­ates. So far:

- Nobel Prize in Phys­i­ol­ogy or Med­i­cine: Mario R. Capec­chi, Mar­tin J. Evans and Oliver Smithies for pro­duc­ing spe­cific genetic alter­ations in mice.

- Nobel Prize in Physics: Albert Fert and Peter Gru­en­berg for dis­cov­er­ing the effect under­ly­ing data stor­age on most hard disks.

As we dis­cussed yes­ter­day, basic sci­ence is cru­cial for inno­va­tion and for eco­nomic growth, but it is often under­ap­pre­ci­ated. Sci­en­tists are not “nerds”, as some­times they are por­trayed in pop­u­lar cul­ture, but peo­ple with a deep curios­ity and drive to solve a Big prob­lem. Many of the speak­ers at the 2007 Aspen Health Forum had been inspired by the Sput­nik and the Apollo mis­sions to become sci­en­tists. Two pre­vi­ous Nobel Prize Lau­re­ates (Peter Agre, Michael Bishop), talked about their lives and careers try­ing to demys­tify what it takes to be a sci­en­tist and to win a Nobel Prize. Both were grate­ful to the tax­pay­ers dol­lars that funded their research, and insisted we must do a bet­ter job at explain­ing the sci­en­tific process to soci­ety at large. Both were proud of hav­ing attended small lib­eral arts col­leges, and hav­ing evolved from there, fueled by their great curios­ity and unpre­dictable, serendip­i­tous paths, into launch­ing new sci­en­tific and med­ical fields.  Bishop listed a num­ber of times where he made deci­sions that were con­sid­ered “career sui­cide” by men­tors and col­leagues, and men­tioned “I was con­fused” around 15 times in 15 minutes…down to earth and inspiring.

The Nobel Prizes, what a beau­ti­ful tra­di­tion. What a beau­ti­ful meme.

The Aspen Health Forum gath­ered an impres­sive group of around 250 peo­ple to dis­cuss the most press­ing issues in Health and Med­ical Sci­ence (check out the Pro­gram and the Speak­ers bios), on Octo­ber 3-6th. It was the first con­fer­ence, by the way, where I have heard a speaker say: “I resus­ci­tated a woman yesterday”.

Key high­lights and trends:

1– Global health prob­lems require the atten­tion of the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity. Richard Klaus­ner encour­aged the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity to focus on Global Prob­lems: mater­nal mor­tal­ity rates, HIV/ AIDS, nutri­tion, can­cer, clean water.  Bill Frist, for­mer Sen­ate Major­ity Leader, added to that list the increas­ing epi­demic risks of global zootic dis­eases (trans­mit­ted between humans and ani­mals), sup­ported by 2 inter­est­ing data points: at any one moment, there are 500,000 peo­ple fly­ing world­wide; in a year, air­lines trans­port the equiv­a­lent of 2 bil­lion passengers.

2– “Let’s get real…Ideology kills”. Mary Robin­son, for­mer Pres­i­dent of Ire­land, on what it takes to stop HIV/ AIDS: “I am from Ire­land, a Catholic coun­try. And I am Catholic. But I can see how ide­ol­ogy kills..we need more empa­thy with real­ity, and to work with local women in those coun­tries who need things like female con­doms.” She was implic­itly crit­i­ciz­ing the large bud­get devoted to unre­al­is­tic absti­nence pro­grams. This ses­sion included a fas­ci­nat­ing exchange where Bill Frist rose from the audi­ence to defend the role of US aid, explain­ing how 60% of retro­vi­ral drugs in African coun­tries have been funded by the Amer­i­can tax­payer, high­light­ing Pres­i­dent Bush’s courage to make HIV/AIDS a top agenda item in many devel­op­ing coun­tries, and crit­i­ciz­ing other coun­tries for not doing enough. Which made Nobel Prize Lau­re­ate Peter Agre, also in the audi­ence, stand up and encour­age the US to really step up to the plate and devote 1% of the GDP to aid, as a num­ber of Euro­pean coun­tries do, instead of 0.1%.

3– Where is the new “Sput­nik”?: Basic sci­ence is cru­cial for inno­va­tion and for eco­nomic growth, but it is often under­ap­pre­ci­ated. Sci­en­tists are not “nerds”, as some­times they are por­trayed in pop­u­lar cul­ture, but peo­ple with a deep curios­ity and drive to solve a Big prob­lem. Many of the speak­ers had been inspired by the Sput­nik and the Apollo mis­sions to become sci­en­tists, at a time when the pro­fes­sion was con­sid­ered cool. Two Nobel Prize Lau­re­ates (Peter Agre, Michael Bishop), talked about their lives and careers try­ing to demys­tify what it takes to be a sci­en­tist and to win a Nobel Prize. Both are grate­ful to the tax­pay­ers dol­lars that funded their research, and insist we must do a bet­ter job at explain­ing the sci­en­tific process to soci­ety at large. Both are proud of hav­ing attended small lib­eral arts col­leges, and hav­ing evolved from there, fueled by their great curios­ity and unpre­dictable, serendip­i­tous paths, into launch­ing new sci­en­tific and med­ical fields.  Bishop listed a num­ber of times where he made deci­sions that were con­sid­ered “career sui­cide” by men­tors and col­leagues, and men­tioned “I was con­fused” around 15 times in 15 minutes…down to earth and inspiring.

4– We need a true Health Care Cul­ture: Mark Ganz sum­ma­rized it best by explain­ing how his health provider group improved care when they rede­fined them­selves from “we are 7,000 employ­ees” to “we are a 3 mil­lion strong com­mu­nity”, mov­ing from Read the rest of this entry »

In what cat­e­gory does Brain Fit­ness fit? Edu­ca­tion, Pro­duc­tiv­ity and Train­ing, Health? Most of the inter­est so far has come from a Healthy Aging angle, but we are start­ing to see broader inter­est, as in the events below. After all, isn’t work­ing on our brains rel­e­vant to all those markets?.

2 busy weeks: I am attending/ speak­ing at a vari­ety of events. I will make sure to blog at least the take-aways from the main events daily, and Car­o­line will also add her per­spec­tive as much as possible.

A) Octo­ber 3-6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Institute

B) Octo­ber 9th: First ses­sion of my class The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness at the UC-Berkeley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI)

C) Octo­ber 10th: Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­nity, work­shop at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health professionals

D) Octo­ber 10th: Sci­ence at Work, Inter­view at the event The Future of Work: Ampli­fied Indi­vid­u­als, Ampli­fied Orga­ni­za­tions, orga­nized by the Insti­tute for the Future

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A) Octo­ber 3-6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Insti­tute. This promises to be a fas­ci­nat­ing event. See below the pan­els I am attending-I will make sure to write some notes every day to keep you in the discussion.

Wednes­day Octo­ber 3rd:

Great Expec­ta­tions: Amer­i­can Atti­tudes toward Per­sonal Respon­si­bil­ity and Medicine

Health­care Re-Imagined: Learn­ing from Olympic Athletes

Thurs­day 4th:

The Dam­aged Brain: The Fight Against Neurodegeneration

The Human Ele­ment: A Can­did Con­ver­sa­tion about Pio­neers of Mod­ern Medicine

The Last Fron­tier: The Mind

Global Sci­en­tific Investment

Sci­ence Ver­sus the Bio­log­i­cal Clock Read the rest of this entry »

2 great blog car­ni­vals (selected col­lec­tions of blog posts), hot from the oven:

Grand rounds: Health and Medicine

Encephalon: Neu­ro­science and Psychology

Today we have a num­ber of indus­try announcements:

1) New edi­tions of these Blog Car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cific topics)

• Encephalon (neuroscience)
• Grand Rounds (medicine)
• Edu­ca­tion (guess!)
• Hap­pi­ness

2) The Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion has launched a Neu­rotech Job Board ded­i­cated to com­mer­cial neu­ro­science (mostly focused on clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, like drugs and devices, not so much on pre­ven­tion, health & well­ness). And the Kaiser Foun­da­tion Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter is look­ing for a Research Project Man­ager.

3) The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence has finally released a report of the human enhance­ment work­shop that took place in June 2006. Read more about it at Zack’s blog.

4) Stephanie West Allen and Dr. Jef­frey Schwartz announce the Sched­ule of Events for their Brains On Pur­pose™ Sem­i­nars (“look­ing at con­flict and the process of con­flict res­o­lu­tion through the lens of neu­ro­science”): Col­orado in Octo­ber and Port­land in November.

5) Reg­is­tra­tion is now open for my class on The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness (more here), Octo­ber 9 30, at UC Berke­ley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI).

6) A cou­ple of great Read the rest of this entry »

To all new readers-Welcome!. The Digg Tsunami has brought over 40,000 vis­i­tors so far…and it con­tin­ues. We need to thank Andrey for his excel­lent tech­ni­cal work in help­ing us ride such a beau­ti­ful wave.

Let me give you an overview of what you can find in our blog, bridg­ing neu­ro­science research and brain health/ “brain exer­cise” prac­tice. First, here you have a few of my favorite quotes from the 10 inter­views we have done with neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy experts in cog­ni­tive and emo­tional train­ing in our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series. You can read the in-depth inter­view notes for each if you want to stim­u­late those neurons…

• “Learn­ing is phys­i­cal. Learn­ing means the mod­i­fi­ca­tion, growth, and prun­ing of our neu­rons, con­nec­tions called synapses and neu­ronal net­works, through experience…we are cul­ti­vat­ing our own neu­ronal net­works.- Dr. James Zull, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy and Bio­chem­istry at Case West­ern Uni­ver­sity: Read Inter­view Notes
• “Exer­cis­ing our brains sys­tem­at­i­cally ways is as impor­tant as exer­cis­ing our bod­ies. In my expe­ri­ence, “Use it or lose it should really be “Use it and get more of it.- Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at New York Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine, and dis­ci­ple of the great neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Alexan­der Luria: Read Inter­view Notes
• “Indi­vid­u­als who lead men­tally stim­u­lat­ing lives, through edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion and leisure activ­i­ties, have reduced risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s symp­toms. Stud­ies sug­gest that they have 35–40% less risk of man­i­fest­ing the dis­ease - Dr. Yaakov Stern, Divi­sion Leader of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter at the Col­lege of Physi­cians and Sur­geons of Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, New York: Read Inter­view Notes

“What research has shown is that Read the rest of this entry »

…that understanding how our brains and minds work may con­tribute to all of them.

Here you have some of the best blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts on spe­cific top­ics) we have con­tributed to this week:

• Grand Rounds: “brain exer­cise” is as impor­tant as nutri­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress management.
• Green Liv­ing: let’s start the con­ver­sa­tion about “sus­tain­able brains”.
• Human Resources: isn’t it obvi­ous, yet often neglected, that “human cap­i­tal” rests on brain devel­op­ment and learn­ing how to learn?.
• Brain Fit­ness Car­ni­val: fully devoted to our topic.
• Video Game Blog­gers: “games” can be good vehi­cles for cog­ni­tive and emo­tional train­ing, if prop­erly devel­oped and used.
• Gene Genie: our genes are not destiny.

You can also check the Med­i­cine 2.0 car­ni­val that we hosted.

As every Mon­day, we bring you many blog car­ni­vals (col­lec­tions of blog posts around spe­cific top­ics) we have con­tributed to. But before we do so, we have 2 announcements: 

• Learn­ing, The Gravy Way will host the next edi­tion of the Brain fit­ness car­ni­val on August 20th. You still have a few days to sub­mit your post on any­thing related to brain exer­cise and men­tal train­ing. And let me know if you want to host future editions.
• We will host the med­i­cine 2.0 car­ni­val on August 19th. Please sub­mit your great posts if you want to participate!

Here are our favorite car­ni­vals today

• Tan­gled Bank (sci­ence)
• Encephalon (neu­ro­science)
• Grand Rounds (med­i­cine)
• Gene Genie (genes and DNA)

 

Other good ones Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the blog car­ni­vals, and other post col­lec­tions, we have con­tributed to this week. Enjoy these col­lec­tions of posts on a vari­ety of top­ics, where we have added a cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science perspective.

Favorites:

• Blog­ging on the Brain (neuroscience)
• Mendel’s Gar­den (genetics)
• Med­i­cine 2.0
• COTC (busi­ness)
• Non-Profit Lead­er­ship
• Fam­ily Life

Other good ones are Read the rest of this entry »