A cou­ple of very well curated col­lec­tions of recent blog posts:

Encephalon #64: hosted by Neu­r­o­critic, cov­er­ing neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy. Please make sure to visit when you have some time to spare…because you will quickly become addicted to the qual­ity con­tent and superb presentation.

It’s Grand Rounds, What Do You Think? GOSH!: hosted by Kim at Emergi­Blog, with an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary, “Napoleon Dyna­mite”, frame. Doesn’t seem to make sense? well, pay a visit.

In 1993, Para­mount Pic­tures released Search­ing for Bobby Fis­cher, which depicts Joshua Waitzkin’s early chess suc­cess as he embarks on a jour­ney to win his first National chess cham­pi­onship. This movie had the effect of weak­en­ing his love for the game as well as the learn­ing process. His pas­sion for learn­ing was reju­ve­nated, how­ever, after years of med­i­ta­tion, and read­ing phi­los­o­phy and psy­chol­ogy. With this rekin­dling of the learn­ing process, Wait­zkin took up the mar­tial art Tai Chi Chuan at the age of 21 and made rapid progress, win­ning the 2004 push hands world cham­pi­onship at the age of 27.

After read­ing Joshua’s most recent book The Art of Learn­ing, I thought of a mil­lion top­ics I wanted to dis­cuss with him–topics such as being labelled a “child prodigy”, bloom­ing, cre­ativ­ity, and the learn­ing process. Thank­fully, since I was pro­fil­ing Wait­zkin for an arti­cle I was for­tu­nate enough to get a chance to have such a con­ver­sa­tion with him. I hope you find this dis­cus­sion just as provoca­tive and illu­mi­nat­ing as I did.

The Child Prodigy

S. Why did you leave chess at the top of your game?

J. This is a com­pli­cated ques­tion that I wrote about very openly in my book. In short, I had lost the love. My rela­tion­ship to the game had become externalized-by pres­sures from the film about my life, by los­ing touch with my nat­ural voice as an artist, by mis­takes I made in the growth process. At the very core of my rela­tion­ship to learn­ing is the idea that we should be as organic as pos­si­ble. We need to cul­ti­vate a deeply refined intro­spec­tive sense, and build our rela­tion­ship to learn­ing around our nuance of char­ac­ter. I stopped doing this and fell into cri­sis from a sense of alien­ation from an art I had loved so deeply. This is when I left chess behind, started med­i­tat­ing, study­ing phi­los­o­phy and psy­chol­ogy, and ulti­mately moved towards Tai Chi Chuan.

S. Do you think being a child prodigy hurt your chess career in any way?

J. I have never con­sid­ered myself a prodigy. Oth­ers have used that term, but I never bought in to it. From a young age it was always about embrac­ing the bat­tle, lov­ing the game, and over­com­ing adver­sity. Grow­ing up as Read the rest of this entry »

Wel­come to the 61st edi­tion of Encephalon, the blog car­ni­val that offers some of the best neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy blog posts every other week.

We do have an excel­lent set of arti­cles today. cov­er­ing much ground. Enjoy the reading:

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Neu­ro­science and Society

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Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and Neu­rocog­ni­tive Health Read the rest of this entry »

Mike hosts a great new edi­tion of Encephalon neu­ro­science & psy­chol­ogy blog car­ni­val, avail­able here: #59 edi­tion.

Fyi, Kim at Change of Shift will pub­lish the next edi­tion of MetaCar­ni­val next Mon­day, Decem­ber 1st.

2 excel­lent recent blog car­ni­val editions:

Encephalon #58 (neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy), hosted by Wal­ter at High­light Health.
Hour­glass #5 (biol­ogy  of aging), hosted by Laura at psique.

Enjoy!

Wel­come to the first edi­tion of MetaCar­ni­val: a Car­ni­val of Car­ni­vals (announced here), the new, monthly, and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary gath­er­ing of blogs and blog carnivals.

Let’s pic­ture all par­tic­i­pants in the shadow of an expan­sive sycamore tree, con­duct­ing a lively Q&A lunch discussion.

Gen­eral Advice

Q: What would you rec­om­mend to live as long as pos­si­ble, and as healthy as pos­si­ble?
- Hour­glass (biol­ogy of aging): Try Not To Stab Your­self Repeat­edly. Or smoke. Or eat that much fast food…you get the idea.  “The vast major­ity of peo­ple are quite com­fort­able engag­ing in habits that cause great harm to the old per­son they will one day be, cut­ting off years or even decades of health.”

Q: Can blog­ging help, too?
- I and the Bird (birds): Indeed. Just read about these life-changing moments in the Kenyan high­lands, brought together spon­ta­neously as a col­lab­o­ra­tion between researchers, con­ser­va­tion­ists, blog­gers. And, yes, birds.

Sports (Well… Brain and Sports)

Q: Tell me some­thing inter­est­ing about ath­letes and “The Zone”.
- Encephalon (neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy): why don’t we review this recent study on the Momen­tum Chain in Sports. You can con­duct your own mini exper­i­ment while watch­ing TV: watch the reac­tions of the play­ers and the teams right after “pre­cip­i­tat­ing events” to see if they actu­ally lead to game-changing moments.

Med­i­cine

Q: Should patients be patient?.
- SurgeX­pe­ri­ences (sur­gi­cal expe­ri­ences): Patience in indeed a virtue, espe­cially Read the rest of this entry »

If you are a blog­ger or read blogs often, you know that there are a good num­ber of excel­lent blog car­ni­vals focused on spe­cific themes. If you are inter­ested in med­i­cine, you know what car­ni­val to visit. Edu­ca­tion, the same. Biol­ogy, neu­ro­science, nurs­ing, birds, aging, philosophy…a vari­ety of top­ics are very well cov­ered in the blogosphere.

What you prob­a­bly haven’t come across is a high-quality “metacar­ni­val” or “car­ni­val of car­ni­vals”, where you can read the best blog posts ACROSS top­ics, sub­jects, disciplines.

This is why a few blog car­ni­val “orga­niz­ers” are launch­ing next Mon­day a monthly rotat­ing “MetaCar­ni­val” to fea­ture the most inter­est­ing posts from a vari­ety of high-quality blog carnivals.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing blog car­ni­vals so far, alpha­bet­i­cally: Read the rest of this entry »

Michael I. Pos­ner is a promi­nent sci­en­tist in the field of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science. He is cur­rently an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon (Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy, Insti­tute of Cog­ni­tive and Deci­sion Sci­ences). In August 2008, the Inter­na­tional Union of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence made him the first recip­i­ent of the Dogan Prize “in recog­ni­tion of a con­tri­bu­tion that rep­re­sents a major advance in psy­chol­ogy by a scholar or team of schol­ars of high inter­na­tional reputation.”

Dr. Pos­ner, many thanks for your time today. I really enjoyed the James Arthur Lec­ture mono­graph on Evo­lu­tion and Devel­op­ment of Self-Regulation that you deliv­ered last year. Could you pro­vide a sum­mary of the research you presented?

I would empha­size that we human beings can reg­u­late our thoughts, emo­tions, and actions to a greater degree than other pri­mates. For exam­ple, we can choose to pass up an imme­di­ate reward for a larger, delayed reward.

We can plan ahead, resist dis­trac­tions, be goal-oriented. These human char­ac­ter­is­tics appear to depend upon what we often call “self-regulation.” What is excit­ing these days is that progress in neu­roimag­ing and in genet­ics make it pos­si­ble to think about self-regulation in terms of spe­cific brain-based networks.

Can you explain what self-regulation is?

All par­ents have seen this in their kids. Par­ents can see the remark­able trans­for­ma­tion as their chil­dren develop the abil­ity to reg­u­late emo­tions and to per­sist with goals in the face of dis­trac­tions. That abil­ity is usu­ally labeled ‚ self-regulation.

The other main area of your research is atten­tion. Can you explain the brain-basis for what we usu­ally call “attention”?

I have been inter­ested in how the atten­tion sys­tem devel­ops in infancy and early childhood.

One of our major find­ings, thanks to neu­roimag­ing, is that there is not one sin­gle “atten­tion”, but three sep­a­rate func­tions of atten­tion with three sep­a­rate under­ly­ing brain net­works: alert­ing, ori­ent­ing, and exec­u­tive atten­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

Mo, the founder of Encephalon blog car­ni­val, has hosted its most recent edition:

- Encephalon 54, with “every­thing from the per­cep­tion of colour and shapes to behav­ioural eco­nom­ics, the neu­ro­science of sports and squab­bling psychologists.”

If you are look­ing for some good arti­cles on recent neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy news and devel­op­ment, this twice-a-month car­ni­val is a great place to start.

Chris hosts a superb edi­tion of Encephalon, pre­sent­ing the arti­cles as an engag­ing and pretty com­pre­hen­sive Q&A ses­sion. If you want to read the answers, to the ques­tions below, by some of the best neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy blog­gers, sim­ply visit Encephalon 52: Q&A.

Q: What is the rela­tion­ship between neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and depres­sion?

Q: For that mat­ter, is there a rela­tion­ship between depres­sion and dia­betes?

Q: What is the mol­e­c­u­lar basis of bipo­lar dis­or­der?

Q: Can brain stim­u­la­tion make you a bet­ter dri­ver? Read the rest of this entry »