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

News and Events

Exer­cise your brain in the Cog­ni­tive Age: The New York Times pub­lished two thought-provoking arti­cles on brain and cog­ni­tive fit­ness, one of them fea­tur­ing SharpBrains.

Read the rest of this entry »

(hat tip: Mind Hacks).

Please try this exper­i­ment, con­ceived by Simons and Chabris for their now clas­sic study, and now pack­aged in a nicer video pro­duc­tion. You will watch a brief video clip show­ing two teams, and your chal­lenge is to count the TOTAL num­ber of times that the bas­ket­balls change hands.

Click Here to view the Bas­ket­ball Exper­i­ment clip.

You can read about the fas­ci­nat­ing results here, and read the full study on sus­tained inat­ten­tional blind­ness (PDF).

Credit for pic: Haines World

Boost your visu­ospa­tial skills and learn about your brain
– By Dr. Pas­cale Michelon

Visu­ospa­tial skills are used every­day in many ways, rang­ing from going from one room to another in your house to solv­ing a jig­saw puz­zle and nav­i­gat­ing in a new city.

One spe­cific visu­ospa­tial skill has to do with mov­ing spa­tial infor­ma­tion around in your head. It is called men­tal rotation.

Let’s take an exam­ple. Can you pic­ture in your head an arrow point­ing to the right? Now, turn this arrow so it points to the left. Done?

Read the rest of this entry »

A quick teaser: Imag­ine you are one of 120 peo­ple in a room. Each per­son in the room is given two lengths of rope and told to chose two of his or her four rope-ends at ran­dom and to tie them together. Then each per­son is told to tie the remain­ing two rope-ends together.

Then, we count up the loops of rope. How many should there be?

SOLUTION: Read the rest of this entry »

It is always good to stim­u­late our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selec­tion of the 50 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed the most in our blog and speak­ing engagements.

Fun exper­i­ments on how our brains work

1. Do you think you know the col­ors?: try the Stroop Test.

2. Can you count?: Bas­ket­ball atten­tion exper­i­ment (Interactive).

3. Who is this?: A very impor­tant lit­tle guy (Interactive).

4. How is this pos­si­ble?.

5. Take the Senses Chal­lenge (Interactive).

6. Are there more brain con­nec­tions or leaves in the Ama­zon?.

Atten­tion

7. How are your divided atten­tion skills? check out “Inside and Out­side” (Inter­ac­tive, from Mind­Fit).

8. Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? try “Two in One” (Inter­ac­tive, from Mind­Fit)

9. Count the Fs in this sen­tence.

10. What do you see? can you alter­nate between 2 views?.

Mem­ory

11. Easy one…draw the face of a penny, please. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is new brain teaser writ­ten by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll.

The Really, Really, Really Big Number

Dif­fi­culty: HARDER
Type: MATH (Numerical/Abstract)
Intim­i­da­tion Fac­tor: HIGH — but don’t be scared!

Ques­tion:
When you divide 12 by 5, the remain­der is 2; it’s what’s left over after you have removed all the 5s from the 12.  When you raise 4 to the fifth power (that is, 4⁵), you mul­ti­ply four by itself five times: 4x4x4x4x4, which equals 1,024.

What is the remain­der when you divide 100¹⁰⁰ by 11?

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

Below you have a quick “email inter­view” we had yes­ter­day with a jour­nal­ist, it may help you nav­i­gate through this emerg­ing field. (if you want some brain exer­cise right now, you can check our Top 50 Brain Teasers).

1. Why is it so impor­tant to exer­cise our brains?

Our brains are com­posed of dif­fer­ent areas and func­tions, and we can strengthen them through men­tal exer­cise– or they get atro­phied for lack of prac­tice. The ben­e­fits are both short-term (improved con­cen­tra­tion and mem­ory, sus­tained men­tal clar­ity under stress­ful sit­u­a­tions…), and long-term (cre­ation of a “brain reserve” that help pro­tect us against poten­tial prob­lems such as Alzheimer’s).

2. What are 1 or 2 things that are guar­an­teed “brain drains”?

- high-levels of anx­i­ety and stress, that are guar­an­teed to dis­tract us from our main goals and waste our lim­ited men­tal energies.

- a very repet­i­tive and routine-driven life, lack­ing in nov­elty and stim­u­la­tion. We have brains to be able to learn and to adapt to new environments

The trick there­fore, is to take on new chal­lenges that are not way too difficult/ impos­si­ble, and learn how to man­age stress to pre­vent anx­i­ety from kicking-in.

3. What are three easy and quick men­tal exer­cises that every­one should be doing daily?

- For stress man­age­ment: a 5-minute visu­al­iza­tion, com­bin­ing deep and reg­u­lar breath­ings with see­ing in our mind’s eye beau­ti­ful land­scapes and/ or remem­ber­ing times in our past when we have been suc­cess­ful at a tough task

- For short-term mem­ory: try a series sub­tract­ing 7 from 200 (200 193 186 179…), or a series involv­ing mul­ti­pli­ca­tion (2,3 4,6 6,9 8,12…) or expo­nen­tial series (2 4 8 16 32 64…) the goal is not to be a math genius, sim­ply to train and improve our short-term mem­ory. Another way is to try and remem­ber our friends tele­phone numbers.

- In gen­eral: try some­thing dif­fer­ent every day, no mat­ter how lit­tle. Take a dif­fer­ent route to work. Talk to a dif­fer­ent col­league. Ask an unex­pected ques­tion. Approach every day as a liv­ing exper­i­ment, a learn­ing oppor­tu­nity.

4. Are cross­word puz­zles and sudoku really as great for exer­cis­ing our brain as they are reported to be? Why? And what about activ­i­ties like knitting?

“Use it or lose it” may be mis­lead­ing if Read the rest of this entry »

A quick tour around the blogosphere:

Great edi­tion of Tan­gled Bank 75

How to Keep Employees

GNIF Brain Blogger

Emo­tional Eat­ing
Fes­ti­val of Stocks #27

Encephalon #18

Pos­i­tive Think­ing for the Week Ahead

Read the rest of this entry »

No mat­ter what we are read­ing or doing, there is always the need to take a lit­tle break and chal­lenge our minds (and to learn a bit about how our brains work). Here you have a selec­tion of the 10 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed most in this site.

1. Do you think you know the col­ors?: the Stroop Test

2. Can you count?: Bas­ket­ball atten­tion experiment

3. Plan­ning is not that easy: Tow­ers of Hanoi

4. Inter­ac­tive visual illu­sion: the Muller-Lyer Illusion

5. Who is this?: A very impor­tant lit­tle guy

5. How many…: Train your Frontal and Pari­etal lobes

6. What’s the miss­ing num­ber: Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion Brain Teaser

7. Who’s the eldest?: Rea­son­ing Skills Brain Teaser

8. Brain Puz­zle for the Whole Brain: The Blind Beggar

9. Is a cir­cle a cir­cle?: Visual Per­cep­tion Brain Teaser

10. How is this pos­si­ble?
Read the rest of this entry »

Today we are trav­el­ing to Japan. Go Hirano is a ser­ial Japan­ese entre­pre­neur who has been explor­ing neuroscience-based oppor­tu­ni­ties in Japan, hav­ing recently cre­ated the com­pany NeuWell (neu­ro­science for well­ness). NeuWell and Sharp­Brains are explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties together to bring world-class pro­grams to Japan, and we thought that Sharp­Brains’ blog read­ers may be inter­ested in learn­ing about trends in Japan.

———————-

Key take-aways:

- Peo­ple in Japan devour any prod­uct with brain-related claims

- But there has been a recent back­lash against chil­dren videogames, so game devel­op­ers have started to focus on older audi­ences with (mostly unproven) brain-health-improving games

- The mar­ket is ripe for pro­grams with proven research and tan­gi­ble benefits

———————-

AF: Hirano-san, tell us a bit about your­self and how you became inter­ested in applied neuroscience.

GH: after help­ing launch one of the first DSL providers in Japan, I started to won­der what the next big­ger value for soci­ety would be. I have always been fas­ci­nated by brain research, so I started to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties to help bring to mar­ket neuroscience-based pro­grams to help stu­dents do bet­ter in exams, and adults age in brain-friendly ways.

AF: what is the state of Brain Fit­ness and Brain Train­ing in Japan? what are the most pop­u­lar appli­ca­tions so far?

GH: I think peo­ple under­stand the con­cepts of Brain Fit­ness and Brain Train­ing. If one method or product/service sounds a bit sci­en­tific there are peo­ple who would try it for fun and curios­ity. How­ever, Read the rest of this entry »