Archive for Pattern Recognition
December 12, 2007 at 8:44 pm · Filed under Brain games, Brain teasers, Brain Training, Mind Games, Pattern Recognition, Visual Illusion ·Tagged attention, brain, Brain games, Brain teasers, illusions, logic, memory, Mind Games, puzzles, Stress, the brain
It is always good to stimulate our minds and to learn a bit about how our brain works. Here you have a selection of the 50 Brain Teasers and Games that people have enjoyed the most in our brain fitness blog and speaking engagements.
Fun experiments on how our brains work
1. Do you think you know the colors?: try the Stroop Test.
2. Can you count?: Basketball attention experiment (Interactive).
3. Who is this?: A very important little guy (Interactive).
4. How is this possible?.
5. Take the Senses Challenge (Interactive). Read the rest of this entry »
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March 28, 2007 at 11:57 am · Filed under Brain exercises, Brain Fitness, Brain games, Brain Training, Brain-based Learning, Casual Games, Corporate Training, Decision-making, Education, Learning, Lifelong learning, Mind Games, Pattern Recognition, Serious Games
Fortune 500’s to Adopt Serious Games for Staff Learning
Newswire Today (press release), UK Mar 13, 2007
“Clive Shepherd, a well-known and respected practitioner and commentator in the field of learning has reviewed the report and said: ’ Serious games provide …”
Related article on Casual Games:
Brain and Mind Fitness and Casual Games: survey results
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February 28, 2007 at 5:52 pm · Filed under ACE, Aging, Attention and ADD/ ADHD, Biofeedback, Biology, Books, Brain anatomy and imaging, Brain Coach, Brain exercises, Brain Fitness, Brain games, Brain health, Brain teasers, Brain Training, Brain-based Learning, Casual Games, Cogmed, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Training, Corporate Training, Decision-making, Education, Emotions, Events, Executive Functions, Freeze-Framer, Glossary, HappyNeuron, Health & Wellness, HeartMath, IntelliGym, Leadership, Learning, Lifelong learning, meditation, Memory Training, Mental flexibility, Mental Health, Microfinance, Mind Fitness, Mind Games, Mind/Body, MindFit, Neurofinance, Neurogenesis, Neurons, Neuropsychology, Neuroscience Interview Series, Neurotechnology, Nintendo Brain, Nutrition, Pattern Recognition, Peak Performance, Philanthropy, Physical Fitness, Posit Science, Positive Psychology, Resiliency, RoboMemo, Self-regulation, Serious Games, Social Entrepreneurship, Stress, Trading psychology, Uncategorized, Vigorous Mind, Visual Illusion, Women's Health, Working memory
Hello dear readers: after a transition period, we have definitively moved to http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog
Please visit us there if you want to keep reading our (close to) daily articles. Please update your feed, and any technorati/ stumbleupon/ del.ic.ious account you may have pointing at this old address. Our new location:
http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog
We won’t be posting more articles here.
We’ll see you there!
-Caroline & Alvaro
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February 19, 2007 at 12:52 pm · Filed under Aging, Brain exercises, Brain Fitness, Brain health, Cognitive Neuroscience, Health & Wellness, Lifelong learning, Mental Health, Mind Fitness, MindFit, Pattern Recognition, Self-regulation, Stress, Women's Health, Working memory
Sharon Begley writes another great article on The Upside of Aging – WSJ.com (subscription required)
- “The aging brain is subject to a dreary litany of changes. It shrinks, Swiss cheese-like holes grow, connections between neurons become sparser, blood flow and oxygen supply fall. That leads to trouble with short-term memory and rapidly switching attention, among other problems. And that’s in a healthy brain.”
- “But it’s not all doom and gloom. An emerging body of research shows that a surprising array of mental functions hold up well into old age, while others actually get better. Vocabulary improves, as do other verbal abilities such as facility with synonyms and antonyms. Older brains are packed with more so-called …”
We discussed some of this effects with Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, who wrote his great book The Wisdom Paradox precisely on this point, at The Executive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger.
In our “Exercising Our Brains” Classes, we typically explain how some areas typically improve as we age, such as self-regulation, emotional functioning and Wisdom (which means moving from Problem solving to Pattern recognition), whereas other typically decline: effortful problem-solving for novel situations, processing speed, memory, attention and mental imagery.
But the key message is that our actions influence the rate of improvement and/ or decline. Our awareness that “it’s not all doom and gloom” and that there’s much we can do is important. You may want to learn more with our Exercise Your Brain DVD.
You can also learn more on the Successful Aging of the Healthy Brain: a beautiful essay by Marian Diamond on how to keep our brains and minds active and fit throughout our lives.
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February 8, 2007 at 12:46 am · Filed under ACE, Attention and ADD/ ADHD, Brain Fitness, Brain games, Brain health, Brain Training, Brain-based Learning, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Training, Corporate Training, Decision-making, Executive Functions, IntelliGym, Learning, Lifelong learning, Memory Training, Mental flexibility, Mind Games, Pattern Recognition, Peak Performance, Serious Games
Today we will continue our review of the benefits of brain training for specific occupations: in this case, pilots and basketball players. The lessons can be relevant not only for corporate training but also for education and brain health & wellness.
To do so, we will select quotes from our interview last year with one of the major scientists in the field of cognitive simulations, Professor Daniel Gopher. You can read the full interview here.
Prof. Gopher published an award-winning article in 1994, Gopher, D., Weil, M. and Baraket, T. (1994), Transfer of skill from a computer game trainer to flight, Human Factors 36, 1–19., that constitutes a key milestone in the cognitive engineering field.
On Cognitive Training and Cognitive Simulations
AF: Tell us a bit about your overall research interests
DG: My main interest has been how to expand the limits of human attention, information processing and response capabilities which are critical in complex, real-time decision-making, high-demand tasks such as flying a military jet or playing professional basketball. Using a tennis analogy, my goal has been, and is, how to help develop many “Wimbledon”-like champions. Each with their own styles, but performing to their maximum capacity to succeed in their environments.
What research over the last 15-20 years has shown is that cognition, or what we call thinking and performance, is really a set of skills that we can train systematically. And that computer-based cognitive trainers or “cognitive simulations” are the most effective and efficient way to do so.
This is an important point, so let me emphasize it. What we have discovered is that a key factor for an effective transfer from training environment to reality is that the training program ensures “Cognitive Fidelity”, this is, it should faithfully represent the mental demands that happen in the real world. Traditional approaches focus instead on Continue Reading
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January 23, 2007 at 7:48 am · Filed under ACE, Attention and ADD/ ADHD, Biology, Books, Brain Fitness, Brain health, Brain Training, Brain-based Learning, Cogmed, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Training, Corporate Training, Decision-making, Education, Emotions, Executive Functions, Health & Wellness, IntelliGym, Learning, Lifelong learning, Memory Training, Mental flexibility, Mental Health, Mind Fitness, Neurogenesis, Neurons, Neuropsychology, Neuroscience Interview Series, Neurotechnology, Pattern Recognition, Peak Performance, RoboMemo, Serious Games, Stress, Trading psychology, Working memory
Given that we are getting new readers let’s re-introduce our Neuroscience Interview Series. If you click on the category (in the right bar) that says Neuroscience Interview Series, you will find the updated list of interviews we have conducted (and also some that have found elsewhere, such as the one with Posit Science’s Dr. Michael Merzenich and Dr. John Ratey).
The interviews we have conducted and published so far, with most recent first:
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January 1, 2007 at 1:17 pm · Filed under Attention and ADD/ ADHD, Biofeedback, Biology, Books, Brain anatomy and imaging, Brain exercises, Brain Fitness, Brain games, Brain health, Brain teasers, Brain Training, Brain-based Learning, Casual Games, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Training, Corporate Training, Decision-making, Education, Emotions, Events, Executive Functions, Glossary, Health & Wellness, Leadership, Learning, Lifelong learning, meditation, Memory Training, Mental flexibility, Mental Health, Microfinance, Mind Fitness, Mind Games, Mind/Body, Neurofinance, Neurogenesis, Neurons, Neuropsychology, Neuroscience Interview Series, Neurotechnology, Nintendo Brain, Nutrition, Pattern Recognition, Peak Performance, Philanthropy, Physical Fitness, Positive Psychology, Resiliency, Self-regulation, Serious Games, Social Entrepreneurship, Stress, Trading psychology, Uncategorized, Visual Illusion, Women's Health, Working memory
Happy 2007 to everyone!
We have just formulated our New Year Resolution: make 2007 the year when Brain Fitness became a mainstream concept.
How do we start? well, let’s announce the launch of the Carnival of Brain Fitness (a Blog Carnival is basically the vehicle that blogs use to share posts around specific topics).
Goal: to facilitate a dialogue about this emerging field across multiple perspectives, from scientists and health professionals, to education and training ones, to basically everyone who has conducted an experiment on his on her brain and mind, and has news to report.
Context: The scientific foundations lie in neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, cognitive training and stress management. Medical and health applications range from stroke and TBI rehabilitation to ADD/ADHD and early Alzheimer’s to Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and cognitive therapy. Educational and training applications go from helping kids improve reading abilities to helping manage stress and anxiety – including work with the “mental game” in sports and high-demand activities pr professions. Each of us may also have experiences to report, where we saw first hand, no matter our age, our innate ability to refine and transform ourselves (and our brains).
Mechanics: If you’d like to contribute,
Read the rest of this entry »
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