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Neuroscience
Can Neuroscience Solve the Mystery of How Students Learn?
August 30, 2015
Educational neuroscience burst onto the scene with the hope of explaining how we learn. But the jury is still out on whether it’s useful for classroom practice. Neuroscientists, while investigating memory, stumbled across the spaced learning effect by examining simple reflexes in sea slugs, crayfish and cats—and by probing and stimulating the neurons in thin slices of rat brain. The neuroscientists discovered that repeated stimuli, with precisely timed gaps, are one of the most reliable ways...
August 30, 2015
Educational neuroscience burst onto the scene with the hope of explaining how we learn. But the jury is still out on whether it’s useful for classroom practice. Neuroscientists, while investigating memory, stumbled across the spaced learning effect by examining simple reflexes in sea slugs, crayfish and cats—and by probing and stimulating the neurons in thin slices of rat brain. The neuroscientists discovered that repeated stimuli, with precisely timed gaps, are one of the most reliable ways...
Male Mice Process Pain Differently
August 28, 2015
Male and female mice use different types of immune cells to process chronic pain. Studies of male mice have shown that immune cells called microglia in the spinal cord have an important role in chronic pain. To see whether this is the same in female mice, a team led by Jeffrey Mogil at McGill University in Montreal and Michael Salter at the University of Toronto, both in Canada, induced chronic pain in both sexes. The team then used drugs or antibodies to reduce microglia function. Whereas pain...
August 28, 2015
Male and female mice use different types of immune cells to process chronic pain. Studies of male mice have shown that immune cells called microglia in the spinal cord have an important role in chronic pain. To see whether this is the same in female mice, a team led by Jeffrey Mogil at McGill University in Montreal and Michael Salter at the University of Toronto, both in Canada, induced chronic pain in both sexes. The team then used drugs or antibodies to reduce microglia function. Whereas pain...
How to Work with People Who Aren’t Good at Working with People
July 2, 2015
Although lower EQ people are generally less rewarding to deal with — they are grumpier, more negative, and more erratic than average — there will be many circumstances where we have to deal with low EQ individuals. Given the difficulties this can entail, it may be useful to keep in mind the following, evidence-based recommendations for managing those situations effectively: Be gentle. Be explicit. Be rational. Do not get offended. Finally, remember that just as high EQ is not always...
July 2, 2015
Although lower EQ people are generally less rewarding to deal with — they are grumpier, more negative, and more erratic than average — there will be many circumstances where we have to deal with low EQ individuals. Given the difficulties this can entail, it may be useful to keep in mind the following, evidence-based recommendations for managing those situations effectively: Be gentle. Be explicit. Be rational. Do not get offended. Finally, remember that just as high EQ is not always...
Mediation Games
June 30, 2015
John Nash died this week, in a tragic car accident. John Nash was the Nobel-prize winning mathematician whose theory of non-cooperative games published in 1950 has been described as one of the top ten ideas in economics in the 20th century. His theory introduced and explored the concept of what is known as Nash equilibrium. According to the New York Times obituary, Nash equilibrium provides a conceptually simple but powerful mathematical tool for analysing a wide range of competitive situations,...
June 30, 2015
John Nash died this week, in a tragic car accident. John Nash was the Nobel-prize winning mathematician whose theory of non-cooperative games published in 1950 has been described as one of the top ten ideas in economics in the 20th century. His theory introduced and explored the concept of what is known as Nash equilibrium. According to the New York Times obituary, Nash equilibrium provides a conceptually simple but powerful mathematical tool for analysing a wide range of competitive situations,...
Why Good People Do Bad Things AND How To Stop Them
June 21, 2015
How to stop people carrying out unethical behaviours. People who anticipate temptation are less likely to do bad things, a new study finds. The research also found that when people thought unethical behaviour reflected poorly on them, they also resisted. Dr Oliver Sheldon, one of the study’s authors, said: “People often think that bad people do bad things and good people do good things, and that unethical behavior just comes down to character. But most people behave dishonestly sometimes,...
June 21, 2015
How to stop people carrying out unethical behaviours. People who anticipate temptation are less likely to do bad things, a new study finds. The research also found that when people thought unethical behaviour reflected poorly on them, they also resisted. Dr Oliver Sheldon, one of the study’s authors, said: “People often think that bad people do bad things and good people do good things, and that unethical behavior just comes down to character. But most people behave dishonestly sometimes,...
What Your Brain Is Doing When You Think It’s Doing Nothing
June 21, 2015
Now UCLA research has found that in quieter moments, the brain is preparing to be social. Professor Matthew Lieberman, who led the study, said: “The brain has a major system that seems predisposed to get us ready to be social in our spare moments. The social nature of our brains is biologically based.” The study had people performing some judgements while looking at pictures.
June 21, 2015
Now UCLA research has found that in quieter moments, the brain is preparing to be social. Professor Matthew Lieberman, who led the study, said: “The brain has a major system that seems predisposed to get us ready to be social in our spare moments. The social nature of our brains is biologically based.” The study had people performing some judgements while looking at pictures.
Negotiation and Memory
June 16, 2015
Is it true that as we get older, we tend to forget things more easily? Or is it that some things are just less important? As negotiators and mediators, we often deal with complex layers of information that appear all too much for any one person to recall. So we enter the negotiation room burdened with our big folders or sporting our slim iPads laden with mega data containing all the information that we might possibly need. I wonder though, if we sometimes rely too much on the documents when we could...
June 16, 2015
Is it true that as we get older, we tend to forget things more easily? Or is it that some things are just less important? As negotiators and mediators, we often deal with complex layers of information that appear all too much for any one person to recall. So we enter the negotiation room burdened with our big folders or sporting our slim iPads laden with mega data containing all the information that we might possibly need. I wonder though, if we sometimes rely too much on the documents when we could...
Great Neural Plasticity Video – Hard to Overcome Learned Bias
May 18, 2015
Engineer shows how hard it is to overcome a System 1 learned program with new information. Be patient in mediation!
May 18, 2015
Engineer shows how hard it is to overcome a System 1 learned program with new information. Be patient in mediation!
A Clear View of the Brain
May 15, 2015
Increasingly, neuroscientists believe that the key to understanding how the brain works lies in its over-all neural circuitry, and the way that widely separated brain regions communicate through the long-range projection of nerve fibres. In this view, mental disorders result from the shorting-out or disruption of the larger circuit wiring of the brain—and it is in defining and describing those circuit connections that Deisseroth’s innovations promise to be especially helpful. Christof Koch,...
May 15, 2015
Increasingly, neuroscientists believe that the key to understanding how the brain works lies in its over-all neural circuitry, and the way that widely separated brain regions communicate through the long-range projection of nerve fibres. In this view, mental disorders result from the shorting-out or disruption of the larger circuit wiring of the brain—and it is in defining and describing those circuit connections that Deisseroth’s innovations promise to be especially helpful. Christof Koch,...
The Neuroscience of Comedy
May 10, 2015
Successful humor often involves distorting our assumptions, and more specifically our “scripts” – these are “hypotheses about the world and how it works based on our previous life experiences.” Richard Restak explains: “It is the brain’s frontal lobes that make sense of the discrepancy between the script and the situation described by the joke or illustrated by the cartoon. This ability is unique to our species… We are the only creatures that possess a highly evolved working memory,...
May 10, 2015
Successful humor often involves distorting our assumptions, and more specifically our “scripts” – these are “hypotheses about the world and how it works based on our previous life experiences.” Richard Restak explains: “It is the brain’s frontal lobes that make sense of the discrepancy between the script and the situation described by the joke or illustrated by the cartoon. This ability is unique to our species… We are the only creatures that possess a highly evolved working memory,...
