Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Book Review)

Gladwell’s talent is for weaving together scientific research findings from fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, criminology and marketing with an anecdotal style to create new ways of looking at things for the popular reader.

Blink, Gladwell’s follow-up bestseller to The Tipping Point, is a more purely psychological work, leaning on the research of Timothy Wilson, a professor at the University of Virgininia who has written about the ‘adaptive unconscious’, that part of our minds which can lead us to good decisions even though we don’t know how we make them; and Gary Klein, a cognitive psychologist who is an expert on how people arrive at decisions under pressure.

Blink is an attempt to bring to the public’s eye this emerging area of psychology, rapid cognition, that has received little popular attention.

Hacking The Brain With Electricity — Don’t Try This At Home

by Amy Standen (Re-post from NPR)

It’s the latest craze for people who want to improve their mental performance — zapping the brain with electricity to make it sharper and more focused. It’s called “brain hacking,” and some people are experimenting with it at home.

The idea’s not completely crazy. Small jolts of electricity targeted at specific areas of the brain are used to treat diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.

The mystery of teenage brain in 14 minutes

Why do teenagers seem so much more impulsive, so much less self-aware than grown-ups? Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore compares the prefrontal cortex in adolescents to that of adults, to show us how typically “teenage” behavior is caused by the growing and developing brain.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore studies the social brain — the network of brain regions involved in understanding other people — and how it develops in adolescents.

Handwriting Trains children’s Brain – find out how

Ask preschooler Zane Pike to write his name or the alphabet, then watch this 4-year-old’s stubborn side kick in. He spurns practice at school and tosses aside workbooks at home. But Angie Pike, Zane’s mom, persists, believing that handwriting is a building block to learning.

She’s right. Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development.

It’s not just children who benefit. Adults studying new symbols, such as Chinese characters, might enhance recognition by writing the characters by hand, researchers say. Some physicians say handwriting could be a good cognitive exercise for baby boomers working to keep their minds sharp as they age.

What is “Accelerated Learning”?

Accelerated Learning is an advanced inter-disciplinary teaching and learning method.  Based on the latest brain research, accelerated learning is a systematic approach that can enhance both learning efficiency and effectiveness while reducing training time and cost.  Accelerated learning is based on the way people naturally learn.  This methodology unlocks much of the human potential for learning that has been left largely untapped by other conventional learning methods.  Many of today’s leading organizations and educational institutions are benefiting from Accelerated Learning’s powerful principles.