Gretchen Rubin: 12 Surprising And Productive Brain Exercises
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-rubin/12-surprising-and-product_b_147769.html

12 Surprising And Productive Brain Exercises - The Huffington Post

12 interesting exercises from writer/editor Dorothea Brande, who also wrote a book called "Wake Up and Live."

Good introduction to X-phi, as rediculous as it sounds.

Philosophers used to combine conceptual reflections with practical experiment. The trendiest new branch of the discipline, known as x-phi, wants to return to those days. Some philosophers don’t like it.

a new philosophy field? holy moly. really good read.

Philosophers used to combine conceptual reflections with practical experiment. The trendiest new branch of the discipline, known as x-phi, wants to return to those days. Some philosophers don’t like it

Pessoas paralizadas conseguem se comunicar através de eletrodos conectados a um computador. Fantastico!

People who are completely paralyzed due to illness or trauma are getting help communicating with a new technology that connects their brains to a computer. Scott Pelley reports.

doodling makes you smarter!

More doodles of infinite awesomeness. Love!

"[The] team asked 40 people to listen to a recording containing the names of people and places. Afterwards the people wrote down the names they could remember. While listening, half of the test subjects were also required to shade in shapes on a piece of paper. Afterwards, they remembered one-third more names than test subjects who didn't doodle while listening. "

Doodling improves concentration

By Lera Boroditsky

ong time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered

Interesting recent work on Linguistic relativity / Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis related ideas in cognitive linguistics

RT @diannagraf: RT @drtiki Want to get ahead? Sleep in http://bit.ly/Op41P @JonathanStrahan don't get up before me in Tas, that's just wrong [from http://twitter.com/meika/statuses/1665793930]

"Smug early birds take note: Night owls actually have more mental stamina than those who awaken at the crack of dawn, according to new research."

RT @jontybrook: Finally! Science confirms that late sleepers are more productive: http://ping.fm/KqtBS (via @tferriss) <- YAY! [from http://twitter.com/danphilpott/statuses/1715473753]

This is an interesting article, but it leaves way too many gaps. Does it measure productivity by hours awake?

I'm not staring into space, I'm trying to live a balanced life

Everyone who knows me needs to read this article

"abstract thinking makes it easier for people to form surprising connections between seemingly unrelated concepts"

blah blah

expect that examples like the rounded rectangle will strengthen the argument to ‘go the e

Fascinating or total B.S.? You decide...

Time for an expert: I asked Professor Jürg Nänni, author

rounded corners versus sharp corners

[Multitaskers are] "suckers for irrelevancy. Everything distracts them." "They couldn't help thinking about the task they weren't doing," Ophir said. "The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can't keep things separate in their minds."

You might think a lot gets done when you multitask, but a study conducted by Stanford researchers Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony Wagner says it isn't so.

People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found.

Humans don’t always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply "wishful thinking." This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. But now, scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple explanation for human decision-making - and may eventually help explain the success of human cognition overall.

Need to read more carefully; till then, count me as skeptical

LOL. The first few sentences made me think of Busemeyer, even before he was mentioned.

"People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information."

People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning.

"People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. It’s an idea that has obvious applications for education, but could be useful for anyone who is trying to learn new material of any kind."

Reminded me that asking questions BEFORE reading the chapter is a better way to prepare students for learning.

The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines are dictated by cognitive limitations.

When things don’t add up, the mind goes into high gear.

Blacketer sent this to me

Older news, but I finally got around to reading it. Interesting piece on the importance of color.

In the latest and most authoritative study on color's cognitive effects, test subjects given attention-demanding tasks did best when primed with the color red. Asked to be creative, they responded best to blue.

Results like these suggest that feeling good about yourself may in part be a matter of having a hard time feeling bad, and that confidence and even success might be triggered by interventions that do nothing but make failure seem the more intimidating possibility. The human brain, for all its power, is suspicious of difficulty, but perhaps we can learn to use that.

Phrases that are easier on the ear aren’t just catchy and easy to remember, McGlone argues, they also feel inherently truer.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boston.com%2Fbostonglobe%2Fideas%2Farticles%2F2010%2F01%2F31%2Feasy__true%2F%3Fpage%3Dfull

in any situation where we weigh information. It’s a key part of the puzzle of how feelings like attraction and belief and suspicion work

"Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. On the face of it, it’s a rather intuitive idea. But psychologists are only beginning to uncover the surprising extent to which fluency guides our thinking, and in situations where we have no idea it is at work."

Cognative fluency

supertitious, crowd, asking for help, familiarity breeds contempt, Mondays, pets, right ear

Many fascinating insights into the human mind are hidden in the most routine activities.

Aggregation of pop-psychology articles

Good insightful articles on practical psychology

psychology blog article

Great blog!

You are not so smart.

via Subgenius Spice :D

Does language profoundly influence the way people see the world? http://bit.ly/cAtxU8 (via @SteveAkinsSEO @lindahollier)

This is an interesting article describing the differences of understanding in different languages.

Language is a uniquely human gift. When we study language, we are uncovering in part what makes us human, getting a peek at the very nature of human nature. As we uncover how languages and their speakers differ from one another, we discover that human natures too can differ dramatically, depending on the languages we speak. The next steps are to understand the mechanisms through which languages help us construct the incredibly complex knowledge systems we have. Understanding how knowledge is built will allow us to create ideas that go beyond the currently thinkable. This research cuts right to the fundamental questions we all ask about ourselves. How do we come to be the way we are? Why do we think the way we do? An important part of the answer, it turns out, is in the languages we speak.

Add: http://bit.ly/aRLx4F @nedkumar: ..how language influences the way people see the world. Lost in Translation http://bit.ly/ba7GUV

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1543871