Michael Merzenich on re-wiring the brain

The Science of "Chunking," Working Memory, and How Pattern Recognition Fuels Creativity by Maria Popova “Generating interesting connections between disparate subjects is what makes art so fascinating to create and to view… We are forced to contemplate a new, higher pattern that binds lower ones together.” It seems to be the season for fascinating meditations on consciousness, exploring such questions as what happens while we sleep, how complex cognition evolved, and why the world exists. How Great Entrepreneurs Think What distinguishes great entrepreneurs? Discussions of entrepreneurial psychology typically focus on creativity, tolerance for risk, and the desire for achievement—enviable traits that, unfortunately, are not very teachable. So Saras Sarasvathy, a professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, set out to determine how expert entrepreneurs think, with the goal of transferring that knowledge to aspiring founders.

The Singularity is Far: A Neuroscientist's View David J. Linden is the author of a new book,The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. He is a professor of neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Chief Editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology. Ray Kurzweil, the prominent inventor and futurist, can't wait to get nanobots into his brain. In his view, these devices will be equipped with a variety of sensors and stimulators and will communicate wirelessly with computers outside of the body. Relationship Rules Human beings crave intimacy, need to love and be loved. Yet people have much trouble doing so. It's clear from the many letters I get that lots of folks have no idea what a healthy relationship even looks like. Because I care about these things, and care about the environments children grow in, I'm using this space as an attempt to remedy the problem—again. From many sources and many experts, I have culled some basic rules of relationships. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

The Brain Needs Downs to Have Ups Four neurochemicals cause happiness : endorphins, dopamine , oxytocin and serotonin. Each evolved to do a different job. When you know what the job is, you know why your happy chemicals can't be on all the time. 1. Thinking Methods: Creative Problem Solving They further divided the six stages into three phases, as follows: 1. Exploring the Challenge (Objective Finding, Fact Finding, and Problem Finding), Generating Ideas (Idea Finding), and Preparing for Action (Solution Finding and Acceptance Finding). Description: Since the arrival of the now classical Osborn-Parnes structure, any number of academic and business entities have re-sorted and renamed the stages and phases of what we now call the Creative Problem Solving Process (CPS). However, the originators' fundamental approach remains in tact. The Creative Problem Solving Institute of Buffalo, New York, has finessed the Osborn-Parnes process to include a divergent and a convergent stage within each of the six stages.

8 Harsh Truths that Will Improve Your Life - Dumb Little Man They say life is what we make of it. By the end of this post, I hope to have helped you decide whether that statement is true or not. There is no doubt that life has its ups and downs. However, how we deal with them can sometimes make all the difference. Today I want to share eight harsh truths that I’ve come to learn from life. Learn How to Think Different(ly) - Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen by Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen | 10:24 AM September 27, 2011 In the Economist review of our book, The Innovator’s DNA, the reviewer wondered whether genius-level innovators such as Marc Benioff, Jeff Bezos, and Steve Jobs challenge the idea that working adults can really learn how to think differently and become innovators. We don’t think so. Remember, it was Steve Jobs who jump-started the now-famous “Think Different” advertising campaign as a way to inspire consumers and recharge Apple’s innovation efforts.

Twelve Virtues of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky - StumbleUpon by Eliezer Yudkowsky The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction. Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer.

Realistic Lateral Thinking Puzzles Lateral Thinking Puzzles, unlike most puzzles, are inexact. In a sense, they are a hybrid between puzzles and storytelling. In each puzzle, some clues to a scenario are given, but the clues don't tell the full story. Your job is to fill in the details and complete the story. Obviously, there is usually more than one answer to any given puzzle, but, in general, only one solution is truly satisfying. You can try solving these puzzles on your own -- that's certainly a legitimate way to go about this -- but usually you can have more fun if you involve other people.

Thematic Apperception Test The Thematic Apperception Test, or TAT, is a projective psychological test. Proponents of this technique assert that a person's responses reveal underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world through the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people.[1] Historically, it has been among the most widely researched, taught, and used of such tests.[citation needed] History[edit] The TAT was developed during the 1930s by the American psychologist Henry A.

Brain is not fully mature until 30s and 40s (PhysOrg.com) -- New research from the UK shows the brain continues to develop after childhood and puberty, and is not fully developed until people are well into their 30s and 40s. The findings contradict current theories that the brain matures much earlier. Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a neuroscientist with the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, said until around a decade ago many scientists had "pretty much assumed that the human brain stopped developing in early childhood," but recent research has found that many regions of the brain continue to develop for a long time afterwards. The prefrontal cortex is the region at the front of the brain just behind the forehead, and is an area of the brain that undergoes the longest period of development.

Is the Universe Conscious? -This post is excerpted, with changes, from the book Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life by Steve Stewart-Williams - available now from Amazon.com , Amazon.ca , and Amazon.uk . Take out a piece of paper and draw a vertical line right down the middle. On one side of the page, make a list everything in the world that you're sure is conscious; on the other, make a list everything that you're sure is not. Unless you're one of those people who pretends that consciousness doesn't exist, it's a safe bet that you'll have human beings on the conscious side; probably you'll have at least some other animals there to keep them company too. Unless you're a New Ager or mentally unbalanced, it's a safe bet that you'll have things like rocks and potato peelers on the other side, the unconscious side.