UPDATE: There was some mixup in the submissions that actually hit my inbox, so six wonderful posts were left out of this edition of the brain fitness carnival. They have now been placed at the top under “Education and Professional Development”.
 
Alvaro from SharpBrains (who has a post in this carnival) has graciously let me host the August 2007 edition of the Brain Fitness Carnival. For those of you new to carnivals, this is simply a collection of links from around the web on topics related to brain fitness, neuroscience, mental development and a bit more. I hope you enjoy!
 
Education and Professional Development
 
Charles H. Green presents Deer in the Headlights Decison-Making, saying, “When faced with surprise sebacks the way most people react is to just do the same thing - they freeze, and can’t adapt. Some people, however, can. Why?” (posted at Trust Matters)
 
Brett presents When Traders Lose Confidence - Part Three: Structuring Your Experience; this advice on redefining ourselves is not only useful for traders, but for all of us (posted at TraderFeed).
 
Dr. Simon Evans presents Harry Potter and the Unfit Brain: some thoughts on various intelligences that even muggles can understand (posted at The Brain Code).
 
Anna Farmery discusses the positive effects of genuine acknowledgment in The Value of Recognition (posted at The Engaging Brand).
 
Charles H. Green presents Is Neuroleadership More Than Reinventing Wheels?, saying, “Is neuroleadership doing more than just codifying common sense? If not, how should it move forward?” (posted at Trust Matters)
 
Stephanie West Allen discusses the implications of neuroplasticity on self-motivated human potential in “There’s a great future in [neuroplasticity]. Think about it. Will you think about it?” (posted at Brains On Purpose™).
 
Brain and Personal Development
 
Vahid Chaychi shows us how we can Use Cognitive Behavior Therapy to Build Self-Esteem. Awareness of one’s self and reactions seems to be the pervading theme. (posted at Healthoma)
 
Alvaro posts a very well laid-out interview in Yaakov Stern: Build Your Cognitive Reserve. This neuroscientist reveals his thoughts on the causes and prevention of dementia. (posted at SharpBrains)
 
Andreas Engvig points out why moving our hips may be as helpful as it is entertaining in Judson Laipply’s Dancing Brain (posted at SharpBrains)
 
Greg presents What Is Mild Cognitive Impairment, And Why Should You Be Worried About It?, with plenty of links for the curious (posted at LifeTwo blogs).
 
MDB shows How to Increase Your Self Confidence in 3½ minutes, because we can all use a little pick-me-up at times (posted at the Million Dollar Blog)
 
Joshua discusses a seemingly unlikely relationship in Getting smarter through emotional mastery (posted at The Gravy Way)
 
Brain News
 
Sudip Ghosh discusses endocannbinoids (”the brain’s own marijuana”) in the long and hilariously entitled I grow my own in the brain, thank you. Endocannabinoids and marijuana. (posted at GNIF Brain Blogger)
 
Brain Foods
 
GrrlScientist discusses recent findings in JavaJive: The Older You Get, the More that Coffee Helps Your Brain. Much to the joy of coffee lovers everywhere. (posted at Living the Scientific Life)
 
Jeremy Burman continues on the subject of caffeine with a throwback to research from 1911, where motives and results were quite different in Caffeine and mental deficiency (posted at Advances in the History of Psychology)
 
Laura Milligan reveals an immense list of the Top 100 Foods to Improve Your Productivity (posted at Bootstrapper). Some of the items on the list might even surprise you.
 
Millionaire Mommy Next Door discusses a surprising link between credit cards and eating habits with Fast Food For Thought (posted at Millionaire Mommy Next Door).

Science backing up emotional mastery? What?
In their new book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better, Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee describe how emotional awareness and physical sensation are both integrated in the same brain structure (the right frontal insula).
 
Excerpts from the August/September 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind, caught my attention with the implication that such seemingly distant realms could be related in the brain. They describe how researchers have found that “people who are more aware of their heartbeats are also more emotionally astute.”
 
My first inclination is to ask which way the river flows: is it that emotionally astute people become more physically self-aware, or that physically self-aware people become more emotionally astute?
 
While this question may seem trivial initially, it may have implications to how we live our lives.
 
In spiritual and other realms, often it is said that a mastery of the emotions must precede any lasting changes in the physical world. As someone who has lost a lot of weight over the past few years, I can attest that a revolution in thought (regarding fitness and diet) must take place before any meaningful improvements to health can begin, then remain.
 
Of course the argument can swing the other way. Ritual plays a huge role in reaching new levels of spiritual awareness.
 
While some have downplayed its importance in their lives, these actions pervade many religions. Prayer is typically down with a reverent head down, or even with the whole body bowing, hands may come up as if to directly connect with this unseen Being. Yoga also brings physicality to the spiritual realm (or is the other way around?) Certain rites are preserved not merely as a throwback to previous generation, but because they are believe to help facilitate a deeper awareness.
 
As this is mainly a site on education and academics (with frequent tangents), what does any of this have to do with getting smarter and performing better?
 
I mentioned this scientifically-based article at the beginning to set a more concrete backdrop for the idea that expanding in many other ways — spiritually, emotionally, physically, etc. — will directly aid us in becoming smarter better people.
 
Again this is not a particularly new message; however, since I know many are hesitant to believe “airy-fairy” talk of emotional mastery and its benefits (myself included at times), I cite this article to suggest that even science is beginning to point in this direction. I know the inference may be a little large, but when the Dalai Lama speaks at a neuroscience conference, realms are quickly emerging.
 
This is what it’s like when worlds collide.

During work or school, sometimes your professor, TA or boss says something that sounds fishy; it makes you think, “Really? Are you sure?” Some may just blurt that aloud anyways without even thinking about it. Yet questioning authority can be a delicate situation.
 
We could just decide to always accept what our “superior” says as law. However, this does not always work either. It can result in a lot of confusion and extra work for you both. Later, you may even regret not speaking up when you had the chance.
 
The questions are then:

• When is the right time to question authority?
• How should we question authority?

Before we get to that:
 
Why should we question authority?
 
As mentioned above, if you nip this problem in the bud (excuse the cliché) then the problem will be stopped before it can grow out of control. Other reasons include the following:

• You have a different perspective: since you deal with knowledge from your unique perspective, you may have read or understood something in a better way. This can allow you to see a new solution or problem that your boss had not noticed.
• You will have, at the very least, a subtle impact: Even if your superior explains away what you have questioned or dismisses it completely, this questioning will subtly impact their thinking. Every time a fact is questioned it makes them reassess its truth. A recent experience has shown me that even a subtle probing may cause a revelation days later.

When should we question authority?
 
Often.
 
If something seems weird to you, there are usually three possibilities:

1. You do not fully understand the situation.
2. Your superior does not fully understand the situation.
3. Both of you do not fully understand the situation

In the first case, you must do something to clarify this gap in your knowledge. How are you going to do that? The simplest way is to ask a question.
 
In the second case, you must probe your superior’s understanding to see how solid it is. The best way to do this is by questioning.
 
The third case is most often the position we are in (even if we do not realize it). In this case, the solution is still the same: question authority.
 
No matter the situation, you stand to improve your stance by asking some questions. Either you will learn more, or reveal something to your superior.
 
What the hell do I know?
 
I can hear the clamouring already: What gives me the right to question my superiors?
 
To address the first question, I will give you some questions in return:

• What can’t it be you to speak up?
• What causes you to feel subordinate to someone else?

Too often, we wait for someone else to speak up, to correct a boss or professor; yet that may never happen. If done in a tactful way, you will gain the respect of these people once they see that you are a critical thinker. Remember the intent here is not to show that you know more than someone else – everyone has something to teach you – the hope is to learn more through questioning.
 
If you are concerned about “rank”, upon careful analysis, we find it doesn’t matter as much in this case. Age, titles, experience do not mean that that person is right all the time or that they know everything in a field. If they are truly wise, they will know that there is always something to be learned. If we are truly wise, we will remember this lesson applies equally to us.
 
Trust your intuition
 
You are going to have to go with your intuition some of the time. I don’t like to think that your intuition is some lower level process that only lets you mate and eat. Your intuition is the culmination of your knowledge and unconscious mental processing. While not at the stage of full awareness, you can feel that something is wrong before knowing why. This excerpt from Blink by Malcolm Gladwell shows this nicely. In this example, gamblers can feel which deck is riskier before knowing why.
 
How should we question authority?
 
Diplomatically, tactfully.
 
Understanding the importance of questioning, is very different than the questioning itself. If done too harshly, we may face the wrath of an angry boss or professor. The fact that they pay or mark you will not slip their minds.
 
As a personal example, during seminars or tutorials occasionally the TA will mention something that seems a bit off or just plain wrong. It would be easy to bluntly say, “Yo, that doesn’t make sense” and yell the correct response. Yet I have to remember two things:

1. I don’t want to hurt anyone
2. He/she may be marking my exam

Instead, these strategies often work for me when questioning authority:

1. Politely, ask for more details or clarification on the point they made. Most of the time they will catch their mistake.
2. If that doesn’t work, say that “I remember reading…” or “I think the professor said…” or simply, “Oh, I thought that…” then insert what you believe to be the correct answer.
3. If you still have some problems, approach them in private. There is no sense in making a scene about one topic. If the topic is particularly important, but the teacher is still persistent in their views, seeing them after lecture will prevent public embarrassment (of either them or yourself).

Before questioning everyone…
 
We should remember that it takes a special creativity to be diplomatic, it only takes a loud voice to be heard. Further should remember that we could very easily be wrong; we may have misinterpreted some data or learned something incorrectly in the first place.

 You should still respect “authority” not because they weld power over you (although you should consider that), but because they are fellow humans with more experience that are trying to help you.

 Take all the lessons you can, but if something smells fishy, it might just be a fish.

Steve Pavlina reminds us how to approach big and small tasks in his posts about breaking problems down into microtasks.
 
Although a popular approach to tackling a goal is to write down the next 3 small steps you can take to accomplish it, often this is not enough to motivate us to complete the job. Writing out all of the small tasks that you need to do to get the job done will help to make each step seem manageable and clearly define the endpoint.
 
This is an example list of microtasks that I have just completed to improve a program that graphs some data:

• add legend
• fix axes labels
• add titles
• change colour scheme for lower graphs
• comment code
• check output graph (see if program is working properly)
• make needed changes
• regraph old data

This list is not perfect and may not make complete sense without proper context, but there are only a couple of really important points to remember.

1. Each step should seem quite manageable and easy to do in a short period of time (Steve mentions 10 minutes).
2. The list should also help you to see the end clearly.

Seeing the end clearly is important in that it reveals what you are working towards and ensures that you don’t continue to work endlessly when all your required tasks are complete.
 

Talia Mana at the Centre for Emotional Well-Being is graciously hosting the July 2007 edition of the Brain Fitness Carnival. I’d like to thank her for taking the time to get everything together and linking to my previous post on Education from a Buddhist perspective.

Of all the posts, I thought the following were the most interesting:

• Working Out Your Brain - Exercise may actually make you smarter.
• Don’t Get Glad, Get Mad! - An interesting theory that being angry actually makes us more able to make rational decisions. Personally, I can see some flaws in this, but it’s still good to think about.
• Bridging the Gap Between Hot and Cold Cognitive States - Thoughts on how our predictions of how we will act when “hot” or emotional on how we act can change based if we are “hot” or “cold” (analytical).
• Mind advice? Bring attention to the conflict - After a string of Buddhists posts (No vacations, Stonecutter, and Education from a Buddhist perspective), it is always nice to see others talking about the benefits of bare attention in learning.
• Apes, Speedy Learners, and new Brain Fitness Channel
  - Discusses the evolution of learning and shows a cool video from New Scientist about an ape figuring out how to get a peanut.
• Keep your mind active - Nothing to revolutionary here, but I like being reminded that we should try novel things in our lives to help us grow. Some suggestions are on that page.
• Five foods for your brain - As good as supplementation can be, I prefer the idea that our brains (and bodies) can be nourished with wholesome eating. Here is a list of 5 common foods to help you stay smart.

I hope you will enjoy the carnival just as much as I did.

At times we need a little push start to get us going on our goals. One of the best ways to do this is by precommitting yourself. This means leaving yourself only one option: to perform. (Also known as burning your bridges.)
 
How can we precommit? How is this relevant to learning?

1. Spend your money: Nothing makes me feel silly like a gym membership going to waste or a $200 textbook being used as a doorstop. When we decide to spend our money on educational materials, we feel compelled to use them; even if only a little.
   • If you want to study for the MCAT, sign up for a course. It will keep the MCAT in mind.
   • If you want to start a website, sign up for a year of web hosting.
   • If you want to learn how to draw, buy art supplies.

   As an addendum to this tip, keep the material where you can see it. It will remind you of all the money you spent and will force you to action.

2. 2) Schedule before you are ready: This can be a bit dangerous, but looming deadlines have a way of quickening our pace. You may want to schedule a meeting with your boss to discuss your results, even before they are completed. Schedule a study group to discuss an issue, even if you haven’t started. As long as you respect the person/group you are committed to, you will be very quick to act as not to disappoint them.
3. 3) Eliminate alternatives: Get rid of all the options that are not involved with what you want to accomplish. With healthy eating, throw out all of your unhealthy food; it is not a waste of money if that food is doing you more harm than good. If you have to study, unplug your TV and give someone the remote, and your video games. Go to an area where your only choice is to work on your task or starve.

While these tips can be a little risky and extreme, bold movements are the ones that will move us to act.
 
See this post from PickTheBrain.com entitled “Commit Yourself to Action by Investing in Success” for more on spending money to motivate yourself.

After today’s workout, I was feeling particularly energized and happy. So happy in fact that I was going to create a post on the benefits of exercise and healthy eating from the perspective of a student. However, in another bit of serendipity, I came across a post from College and Finance that describes the top 5 college student stressors and the top 5 ways to relieve them.
 
While the list isn’t so revolutionary, it is important to remember these little tips to break stress, because we can always use help on all fronts. His tips, in order, are the following:

1. Working out
2. Sleeping
3. Listening to music
4. Eating right
5. Management

While Scott has commented nicely on all of these, I’d like to throw in my two cents for each.
 
Working out
 
Now I am a true believer in short workouts. Preferably 30 minutes, an hour as an absolute maximum. I say this for two reasons: 1) Thirty minutes to an hour is the optimum workout length for muscle growth, 2) We have better things to do than live in the gym. After a workout, run or real sport (sorry beer pong), I always feel physically drained but mentally and emotionally invigorated. I feel good about my body, and those endorphins give me a nice buzz for a couple hours afterwards. Personally, I feel that working out is a stress reliever because you can work out some emotional tension in a physical way, but also provides some mental clarity as it gets you out of that sluggish or “blah” feeling. Any sort of activity is fine, but my personal preference is weight lifting. I know it’s silly, but I like the idea that I can lift up heavy things. (Oh and open jars, if you ladies are looking… Sorry dudes, nothing personal.)
 
Sleeping
 
Did I even tell you guys about the time I slept through my anatomy exam? Not explicitly, but I did allude to it. Yeah, that was some serious bad-news-bears. Sleep helps solidify memories and gives you a break from the pressures of your day, If that isn’t enticing enough, this is one of the only ways that we can easily enter an unconscious state; sleep is a pretty weird phenomenon when you think about it. Some people describe sleep as a waste of time, but sleep is a necessity. In the Bourne Identity, sleep is described as a tool that should be used when one can (in the book at least). Most of us don’t live such tumultuous lives, so we should be able to manage to use this tool as often as we need. Try not to think of sleep as a waste, but instead a time for recharging yourself and reorganizing thoughts.
 
Listening to music
 
As I have been posting a lot on Zen Buddhism, this thought on music will fit in nicely. Stress is often caused by thinking about all the things we should have done in the past, or what we have to do in the future. However when you are really listening to a piece of music that moves you, that permeates your being, you become a part of that music and are aware only of the sounds and emotions you feel. Music has the power to evoke that present moment awareness that helps us escape from stress. While I enjoy music ranging from Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony (first movement) to Tupac’s Hit ‘em Up, the importance is that the music easily drives you to the present moment. By the way, as a personal preference, I think if you play it louder, you can catch those nuances that really make a song. Put on some headphones though, because not everyone will be interested in hearing your Chinese pop.
 
Eating right
 
I have undergone a drastic change in diet over the past 5 years: from crap to healthy to vegetarian. While the most noticeable effect has been my dramatic improvement in health (I’ve lost around 50 pounds), a subtler affect has been on my thinking. I find that you feel more mentally quick, more apt think a little bit more and a little bit harder when you are eating healthier cleaner food. Although we all love playing the poor student card, your health and mental clarity are worth while investments. I’m sure 10 heads of broccoli will serve you better than the forty of gin. That being said, you should enjoy eating as well. If you are going to eat some crap, relish in it. (Like that little pun there? Eh? Eh?) There’s no sense in eating a whole pizza, then beating yourself up over it for an eternity. Scott describes how it eats a tub of ice cream between exams. Frankly I can’t take that much ice cream, but I do eat out a lot during exams. It’s a good chance to relax and not have to cook. This and the tastiness of the food is worth the hit in the wallet to me.
 
Management
 
I can’t emphasize the importance of a good time management system for reducing stress. The main benefit is that you don’t have to keep a whole bunch of crap in your head, you can just put it down on a piece of paper/agenda/PDA. You have enough to remember with school and/or work, why should you have to remember all your small errands and events? Just write that stuff down and stop worrying about it. There are services that will email you when an appointment is coming up (Google Calendar and others I’m sure). Or you could just use an agenda. A helpful tip I’ve heard is to even write in a little reminder a week ahead to remind you that an appointment is coming up. Incidentally, I have my G2 exit test in roughly two weeks (Ontario driving test). Thanks Google Calendar!
 

Stress relief, or rather, living without stress deserves a lot more respect than it gets now. Even if it takes a little more time or money (not that it needs too), your sanity is priceless.

Jinfeng held up a rice cake and said, “Do you understand it?”
The monastic said, “No, I don’t.”
Jinfeng said, “I have expressed only half of it.”
 
In his lesson, Roshi John Daido Loori describes many lessons that apply nicely to students, just as they do to monks. (Roshi is a title describing a teacher/leader of Zen Buddhist monks, it’s not a part of his name.)
 
He mentions how the relationship between the teacher and student must be a dynamic one. The role of the teacher is not simply to espouse knowledge, and the role of the student is not simply to receive. The student must actively seek knowledge and ask when they do not understand. Just as one may not fully grasp the significance of the rice cake (as I do not), one may not fully understand the significance of the periodic table. While there is something do be said about quiet respect for your teacher, this attitude does not allow one to learn to one’s full potential.
 
In this case, it is also the role of the teacher to create an environment where students feel comfortable enough to approach. When a question is asked, the student and the lacunae (hole) must be given the respect they deserve. At times while tutoring students, I have been tempted to subtly demean a question, but simply being aware that this problem can arise will help to curb it.
 
Still, it is not enough to simply passively answer questions with tact, one must poke holes in the knowledge of one’s students to test their comprehension. Again this is to be done with no judgment, only to help the student’s growth. Further, the teacher must actively show their willingness to engage in this dynamic, because students, generally speaking, are hesitant to ask for help.
 
On the role of the student, Daido Roshi describes how the Japanese culture of uniformity sometimes bothered him. Within the framework of education, this leads to students blindly following the teacher’s instructions. And while faith is needed in some aspects of life, blind faith in an imperfect teacher, or more importantly, an imperfect interpretation can be dangerous. At times, all learners must question the validity of what is being taught and why.
 
The application of this to everyday learning is simply to become aware of (a) if you understand what you are learning and (b) you understand its importance.
 
It is very easy to be bold in mundane ways, such as attire, mannerisms, speech, etc. To truly be revolutionary, however, is to be bold in thought. It is very easy to fall into the trap of blindly accepting what we are taught, but again, with awareness comes the power to stop it.
 
This sort of thinking speaks to the heart of what it is to be free and an individual. A common desire is to be autonomous, but how willing are we to think differently? It is our responsibility as learners to become aware of this goal to be learned individuals while still being receptive to new ideas. Similarly, it is teachers’ responsibility to foster this attitude in their students.
 
While this post seems to have delineated between teachers and students, these roles are interchanged quickly or may occur at the same time in the same person. Thus these lessons of awareness, individuality, questioning and boldness need to be brought forth in all of us, not only in some external “them”.

After searching for a place that shares my love of the mind mixed with some alternative fare, I’m glad to present the 12th Brain Blogging Carnival.
 
If you don’t know what a carnival is, it is simply a collection of links related to some theme or topic. In this case, they showcase posts “related to the brain and mind that go beyond the basic sciences into a more human and multidimensional perspective.”
 
Of particular interest to me were posts on the hype surrounding Alzheimer’s disease and brain games; top 10 profound benefits of meditation; and Cheap ways to learn and feed your brain.
 
With regards to the post about Alzheimer’s, as with all news posts about scientific findings, it is important to take them with a grain of salt. More often than not, sadly, the articles misrepresent or just plain lie about the results reported in the journal. If drug improves blood flow to the heart, a journalist may spin it as a cure for cardiovascular disease. For the most part scientific claims are quite conservative and modest, so if you see a flamboyant headline, better think twice.

While reflecting on how I prepared for the MCAT, I realized that I was unknowingly forced to warm-up before every class.
 
The MCAT course I was taking (Kaplan) was in downtown Toronto, and I commuted with my father on his way to work. So most mornings he would drop me off at the McDonald’s, and I would go over the material I needed to before class. Frankly, I didn’t have much else to do other than people-watch, but construction workers aren’t that interesting at McDonald’s.
 
During this time I would reflect on what I had learned in previous classes, tried to fill in holes of knowledge, and previewed for my upcoming class. These 3 tasks are tremendously helpful in solidifying knowledge:
 
1) Reflect on past lessons
 
When you review material of the previous lesson, you begin to draw new connections that you may have missed in the first pass. This review will also help you understand concepts in upcoming classes, because, for the most part, your lectures will build on top of one another.
 
2) Find and fill in holes
 
The areas that you should devote the most time to are those in which you struggle. This may make intuitive sense to some people, but sometimes we forget to do it. You may be doing really well in the chemistry section on electron promotion, and since you are doing well on it, you just keep doing it to feel good. Although feeling good is… good, the goal here is to improve, so we have to tackle the rough stuff. In finding what you still need to learn, you may begin to truly grow. Interestingly enough, you mark increases will mostly come from the subjects where you can push that poor to a good (or even great), rather than pushing that awesome to a perfect.
 
3) Preview for the upcoming class.
 
Even before looking at the material for the upcoming class, it can help just to write down what you already know. I heard this tip relatively recently, and it can make learning quite exciting.
 
Let’s say that we will be learning about air pressure. So just write down what you know. Here’s my (partial) list:
- airplanes
- lift
- Bernouli (sp?)
- pneumatics
- pistons
- pressure, force, area, volume: some equation relates them
- P=FA?
 
Ok, I’m realizing that I am not as sure about my physics as I once was, but that’s ok. The important points here are that a) you are activating your brain to think about this topic and b) once you come across even a vaguely familiar point during the actual lesson, it will stick more firmly. Maybe it’s just me, but when I realize I know more than I thought, I get excited. Not sexually, but close.
 
Just like a good athlete, we must warm-up before training. The purpose of the warm-up is not to waste time or bore us; it is to prepare our minds and bodies for the upcoming task. Warming up before exercise or sport will prevent injury and increase performance. While the injuries are pretty minimal during study, warming up will definitely reduce mental anguish and increase the amount you can learn.