brain

Let Your Mind Wander

- Adam Clare

I’ll keep this short so your mind doesn’t wander away: studies show it’s good to let your mind wander.

The regions of the brain that become active during mind wandering belong to two important networks. One is known as the executive control system. Located mainly in the front of the brain, these regions exert a top-down influence on our conscious and unconscious thought, directing the brain’s activity toward important goals. The other regions belong to another network called the default network. In 2001 a group led by neuroscientist Marcus Raichle at Washington University discovered that this network was more active when people were simply sitting idly in a brain scanner than when they were asked to perform a particular task. The default network also becomes active during certain kinds of self-referential thinking, such as reflecting on personal experiences or picturing yourself in the future.

The fact that both of these important brain networks become active together suggests that mind wandering is not useless mental static. Instead, Schooler proposes, mind wandering allows us to work through some important thinking. Our brains process information to reach goals, but some of those goals are immediate while others are distant. Somehow we have evolved a way to switch between handling the here and now and contemplating long-term objectives. It may be no coincidence that most of the thoughts that people have during mind wandering have to do with the future.

Via Boing

You Can Improve Your IQ

- Adam Clare

Just in case you’re wondering, yes you can improve your intelligence!

It used to be believed that people had a level of general intelligence with which they were born that was unaffected by environment and stayed the same, more or less, throughout life. But now it’s known that environmental influences are large enough to have considerable effects on intelligence, perhaps even during your own lifetime.

A key contribution to this subject comes from James Flynn, a moral philosopher who has turned to social science and statistical analysis to explore his ideas about humane ideals. Flynn’s work usually pops up in the news in the context of race issues, especially public debates about the causes of racial differences in performance on intelligence tests. We won’t spend time on the topic of race, but the psychologist Dick Nisbett has written an excellent article on the subject.

Flynn first noted that standardized intelligence quotient (I.Q.) scores were rising by three points per decade in many countries, and even faster in some countries like the Netherlands and Israel. For instance, in verbal and performance I.Q., an average Dutch 14-year-old in 1982 scored 20 points higher than the average person of the same age in his parents’ generation in 1952. These I.Q. increases over a single generation suggest that the environmental conditions for developing brains have become more favorable in some way.

Video Games for the Brain

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Become a smarter a individual by exercising your brain using video games!

The five-week program required Alex to spend up to an hour a day on a computer, pitting his wits against a robot. Among other exercises, the robot blinked out sequences of flashing lights that Alex was required to replicate.

The program made a dramatic difference in Alex’s ability to concentrate, remember and act on daily chores, his mother says.

“I noticed it immediately,” said George, 47, who lives with her physician husband in Santa Rosa Valley, California. “The program was like a game and my son was loving it.”

Cogmed is part of an emerging brain fitness software industry that could expand rapidly as aging baby boomers seek ways to stave off dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The size of the U.S. market for brain stimulation products — which can range from games such as Nintendo Co Ltd’s Brain Age to programs backed by research showing they can improve memory or other cognitive functions — more than doubled between 2005 and 2007 to $225 million, according to a new report by the consulting group SharpBrains.

Just as baby boomers’ desire to delay cardiovascular and ot

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