John Med­ina, Direc­tor of the Brain Cen­ter for Applied Learn­ing Research at Seat­tle Pacific Uni­ver­sity, and author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School, wrote a great arti­cle for us on Brain Rules: sci­ence and prac­tice, bring­ing brain research to daily life.

We enjoyed the book very much since it pro­vides an excel­lent and engag­ing overview of recent brain research, so we are glad to see it reach­ing new cor­ners. You may enjoy these 2 new resources:

1) A 52-minute video based on his Google talk on April 8th: click Here. Great dis­cus­sion of the brain ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal exer­cise and stress management.

2) An inter­view at Har­vard Busi­ness Review, titled The Sci­ence of Think­ing Smarter. I enjoyed some of the exchanges, such as this one (though I find the ques­tion a bit mys­ti­fy­ing, are we assum­ing it is genes all that mat­ter for leadership?):

Ques­tion: In the absence of genetic test­ing, do you see any merit in the sort of psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing some busi­nesses use, such as the Myers-Briggs test?

Last Decem­ber we launched  our stim­u­lat­ing Author Speaks Series to pro­vide a plat­form for lead­ing sci­en­tists and experts writ­ing high-quality brain-related books to share their insights with Sharp­Brains read­ers. Par­tic­i­pants so far include (in order of appearance):

Read the rest of this entry »

(Please remem­ber you can sub­scribe, at the top of this page, to receive this com­pli­men­tary bi-monthly newslet­ter by email). 

We are proud to announce that we now belong to the exclu­sive Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Part­ner Net­work. Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Mind spoke highly of our web­site last year, so it was only nat­ural (but made us very pleased) that we were invited to join their new blog­ger network. We remain an inde­pen­dent company, so there will be few obvi­ous changes — mainly some more links between their web­site and ours and new ban­ner ads admin­is­tered by Sci­en­tific American’s great team. 

News

Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Report: Reviews:  our just released Mar­ket Report is earn­ing a grow­ing num­ber of acco­lades as a must-read pub­li­ca­tion for exec­u­tives and investors inter­ested in emerg­ing brain health trends and opportunities.  

Brain Rules– sci­ence and prac­tice: mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist John Med­ina releases a new book to make brain sci­ence acces­si­ble and rel­e­vant to all, and writes a fun arti­cle chal­leng­ing the very exis­tance of class­rooms and cubi­cles. Read the rest of this entry »

Inter­ested a good, non-technical, sum­mary of the impli­ca­tions of recent brain sci­ence in our daily lives? Biol­o­gist John Med­ina offers that in his arti­cle below (as part of our Author Speaks Series) and in his new book: Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School. Enjoy!

(Note: John will be in the Bay Area on April 8 and 9th, speak­ing at Google and San Jose Rotary).

———————-

Brain Rules

– By John Medina

Go ahead and mul­ti­ply the num­ber 8,388,628 x 2 in your head. Can you do it in a few sec­onds? There is a young man who can dou­ble that num­ber 24 times in the space of a few sec­onds. He gets it right every time. There is a boy who can tell you the exact time of day at any moment, even in his sleep. There is a girl who can cor­rectly deter­mine the exact dimen­sions of an object 20 feet away. There is a child who at age 6 drew such life­like and pow­er­ful pic­tures, she got her own show at a gallery on Madi­son Avenue. Yet none of these chil­dren could be taught to tie their shoes. Indeed, none of them have an IQ greater than 50.

The brain is an amaz­ing thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stephanie West Allen kindly alerted us of her impres­sive new ini­tia­tive and blog, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dr. Jef­frey M. Schwartz, titled Brains On Pur­pose. They have part­nered to bring a series of sem­i­nars on neu­ro­science and con­flict res­o­lu­tion: Port­land, Ore­gon, in Novem­ber 2007, and San Fran­cisco Bay Area in Jan­u­ary 2008-so far. Dr. Schwartz has pre­vi­ously par­tic­i­pated in a sim­i­lar and fruit­ful ini­tia­tive on The Neu­ro­science of Lead­er­ship with David Rock. We wish them best luck in this excit­ing initiative.

Stephanie writes a great blog post on “What are you feel­ing?” “What am I feel­ing?” These ques­tions are tools for brain tam­ing, explain­ing how “A flurry of arti­cles appeared this week (such as this one in Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can: “Name that feel­ing: You’ll feel bet­ter”) about the neu­ro­science research show­ing that label­ing your feel­ings can quiet your brain and increase impulse control”

adding that…

“In our recent arti­cle “Lead Your Brain Instead Of Let­ting It Lead You,” we talk about the prac­tice of mak­ing men­tal notes (first described by Jeff in his book Dear Patrick: Life is Tough — Here’s Some Good Advice). Devel­op­ing your skill in mak­ing men­tal notes can bring relief when high con­flict occurs.” and “The more skilled you get at label­ing, the more quickly no mat­ter the sit­u­a­tion you can return to equa­nim­ity and composure.”

Check her post to learn more about the label­ing tech­nique. Devel­op­ing men­tal notes can be a very pow­er­ful way to self-regulate behav­ior, not too dif­fer­ent from cog­ni­tive ther­apy and emo­tional self-regulation tech­niques.

Excit­ing to see more sci­en­tists and prac­ti­tion­ers bring­ing research into prac­tice! As we have men­tioned, Brain Fit­ness is some­thing that applies to dif­fer­ent ages and dif­fer­ent pur­poses, and this is a great exam­ple for lawyers.