NO ROAD, NO trail can pen­e­trate this for­est. The long and del­i­cate branches of its trees lie every­where, chok­ing space with their exu­ber­ant growth. No sun­beam can fly a path tor­tu­ous enough to nav­i­gate the nar­row spaces between these entan­gled branches. All the trees of this dark for­est grew from 100 bil­lion seeds planted together. And, all in one day, every tree is des­tined to die.

This for­est is majes­tic, but also comic and even tragic. It is all of these things. Indeed, some­times I think it is every­thing. Every novel and every sym­phony, every cruel mur­der and every act of mercy, every love affair and every quar­rel, every joke and every sor­row — all these things come from the for­est. Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from David DiSalvo’s new book What makes  your brain happy and why you should do the oppo­site.)

A new prod­uct is about to hit the mar­ket, and I think you’ll want to take notice. It’s called the “Super Novum.” Shaped like a slightly over­large motor­cy­cle hel­met, the user places it on her head and pushes just one but­ton to get things started. She doesn’t know it yet, but she has just given her brain an amaz­ing advan­tage over all the other brains walk­ing around out there. Some of the fea­tures she’ll expe­ri­ence include greatly reduced selec­tive attention—no more miss­ing the details! Read the rest of this entry »

When: Next Fri­day, Decem­ber 9th, 11am Pacific Time/ 2pm East­ern Time.

What: Live Q&A with David DiS­alvo on the lat­est cog­ni­tive sci­ence of how our minds work.

How: You can Reg­is­ter Now Here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fas­ci­nat­ing raw footage from a 1990 inter­view with Steve Jobs. Please don’t miss the pro­found and quite funny first three min­utes and a half (the rest is a more usual tech inter­view).

Watch An Inter­view With Steve Jobs on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Money quote: Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times has recently pub­lished sev­eral very good and seem­ingly unre­lated articles…let’s try and con­nect some dots. What if we ques­tioned the very premise behind nam­ing some class­rooms the “class­rooms of the future” sim­ply because they have been adding tech­nol­ogy in lit­er­ally mind­less ways? What if the Edu­ca­tion of the Future (some­times also referred to as “21st Cen­tury Skills”) wasn’t so much about the How we edu­cate but about the What we want stu­dents to learn and develop, apply­ing what we know about mind and brain to the needs they are likely to face dur­ing the next 50–70 years of their lives? Read the rest of this entry »

We just noticed that the Alliance for Aging Research offers an excel­lent list of ref­er­ences on Brain Health Research, orga­nized in these 10 sec­tions below. Enjoy!

#1 Nour­ish Your Nog­gin: Eat a Brain Healthy Diet Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple of Sharp­Brains friends strongly rec­om­mend the recent book  “Por­traits of the Mind: Visu­al­iz­ing the Brain from Antiq­uity to the 21st Cen­tury”, by Carl Schoonover, both as great read­ing and as a beau­ti­ful cof­fee table book.  The book is avail­able now with a sig­nif­i­cant dis­count via Amazon.com.

You can see more pho­tos here, and read a good New York Times arti­cle here. Enjoy!

These fan­tas­tic pic­tures by Carl Schoonover in “Por­traits of the Mind: Visu­al­iz­ing the Brain from Antiq­uity to the 21st Cen­tury” will have 2 effects on your brain: 1) stim­u­late the neu­rons in your occip­i­tal lobes (as you know, the part at the back of your  brain that is devoted to vision) and 2) acti­vate your rea­son­ing skills as you reflect on what the mind is…

See more pho­tos here.

Encephalon (brain & mind blog car­ni­val, edi­tion ) finally meets Grand Rounds (health & med­i­cine blog carnival).

What a nice sur­prise. Hello. Nice to meet you!

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Note: Chronic Babe wins a com­pli­men­tary copy of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness for basi­cally invent­ing cog­ni­tive sleep ther­apy. Con­grats!

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Life and Death

Mind­Hacks dis­cusses an unex­pected surge in brain activ­ity when blood pres­sure drops to zero.

In Sick­ness & In Health suf­fers a death in the fam­ily. Adam shem tov. A man of good name.

Brain­Blog­ger won­ders, is reli­gion a “nat­ural” phe­nom­e­non?

Mind and Empathy

Behav­ior­ism & Men­tal Health finds that every­one can have a men­tal ill­ness — take a look at “Adjust­ment Dis­or­der”.

ACP Internist rein­forces the impor­tance of empa­thy. Novel Patient encour­ages patients to dream big, Flo­re­cen­dot­com high­lights how patients them­selves con­tribute to patient safety. The Hip­po­cratic Oaf dis­cusses the feel­ings of a med­ical stu­dent. Clin­i­cal Cases won­ders what doc­tors  in train­ing carry in their white coats.

Advances in the His­tory of Psy­chol­ogy exam­ines an impor­tant early step in the jour­ney to con­cep­tu­al­ize cog­ni­tion and emo­tion from a neural point of view.

The Fit­ness Fixer empathizes with her feet.

Brain

How to Cope With Pain dis­cusses a con­tro­ver­sial treat­ment for severe pain.

Neu­rophiloso­pher shows how vision (view­ing one’s body) can mod­u­late the senses of touch and pain. Fun exper­i­ments  included. Neu­r­o­critic takes things one step fur­ther, and takes us to the poten­tial future of tat­too removal.

Prov­i­den­tia announces a new NFL Con­cus­sion Com­mit­tee. 300,000 sports-related trau­matic brain injuries occur in the United States alone each year.

Sharp­Brains answers 15 com­mon ques­tions related to neu­ro­plas­tic­ity.

Med­ical Smart­phones Read the rest of this entry »

Quick heads up: the lat­est edi­tion of Encephalon brain & mind blog car­ni­val is Here, nicely hosted by Neuroskeptic.