January 2008

For years I’ve seen the hullabaloo about personal “learning styles” and I admit, I never really “got” it. Oh, I understood the theory, but it didn’t seem relevant - Apparently, that’s because the articles weren’t presented for my learning style ; )

That all changed this week, as I worked my way through an online class in content creation (more on that another time). The course authors not only wrote a lesson on the topic, but went out of their way to engage participants of all learning styles. So I got it, finally. And lucky you, I need to share what I learned, as part of learning. [click to continue...]

I thought you’d like a sneak peak at this week’s project:

That’s right, the writer who can’t seem to keep up with one blog is starting a second one. Sure, it seems counter-intuitive, over-achieving and down-right absurd. Still, in a backwards way, starting a second blog might just cure my blogging blahs, and benefit both blogs. [click to continue...]

Earlier this month, I announced that I’d once again be taking up a brain-maintenance regime. I outlined a number of areas and goals, promised to track and report on them here. But as the more observant of you have noticed, there’s been no reports to observe.

You see, I haven’t been posting my progress because I haven’t been tracking my progress. Yes, this generally leads to a lower level of progress. That doesn’t mean there is no progress, of course. Measurements are not the goal, just a way of, erm.. measuring. (Profound, aren’t I?)

In the absence of clear measured and tracked achievements, I’ll offer a guesstimate… My brain is 70% fixed. (And yes, I just pulled that number out of thick air - air thick with the promise of further progress) [click to continue...]

In the latest over-reported neuro-science news, there’s a gem of insight the mainstream media is over looking: our beliefs and expectations can and do impact how we experience the world around us.

 The study itself is pretty simple - take identical bottles of wine, slap on price tags ranging from  $10 to $90,  and measure people’s brain activity while they sample and rate the wines according to preference.    (The actual details were a little more complicated than that, but, hey, you’ve got the idea)

The general results aren’t too surprising: people preferred the wines with the more expensive price tags, regardless of the actual value of the wines.   Marketing experts have known this for a long time, and any number of tests have been done to confirm it, and it’s this aspect that the media seems to be focused on. 

“Consumers are shallow and easily fooled,” seems to be the message, but the brain scans revealed something deeper than simple consumer-snobbery.

The participants didn’t just have a vague impression that pricier wines were better; their brains actually registered more pleasure when they sampled what they believed were better quality wines.  The activity in the brain’s taste centers were not affected by the price tags, but the areas that process pleasure showed stronger activity associated with the wines that were believed to be more expensive.

In other words, the wines didn’t actually taste better to the brain, but the experience was more pleasurable.

Back to the gem of info that’s being overlooked here?

Because the research subjects expected certain wines to be more pleasurable than others, they experienced them as more pleasurable.  And they didn’t just slap mental labels of “better” or “worse” onto their reactions to the wine, they *experienced* them differently.

So …

What we expect to experience really can change our experience: and not in some magical, mystical way, ala “The Secret” but in measurable terms, via various brain scanning technologies, accepted by real scientists.

Pretty powerful stuff, isn’t it? 

I do believe I’m drunk on the knowledge!

In a very pricey way, of course.

________________________________

MINDTWEAK: “I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path” -Dalai Lama
________________________________

College students apparently aren’t: In a test of working and visual memory, the 5 year old chimp Ayumu and his friends came out on top. Find out how you stack up with a version of the test , available by courtesy of the good folks at Lumosity.

Ok, so yes, we’re muddying the definition of “smart” again… the study really tested a very limited skill set. Overly simplified, a series of numbers appeared on a computer touch screen, then were hidden with white squares. The chimp or human was required to select the squares in order of the numbers they replaced. (And yes, both the chimps and college students had learned to count to 9.)

The results varied depending on the details of the test, but over all, the chimps did better.Sometimes they were faster, sometimes they were more accurate. Ayumu (immortalized here on YouTube) did the best, with an 80% success rate in at least one set of tests. Even with 6 months of training, the students still couldn’t out perform their young primate cousins.

The difference was clearest when the numbers were shown very briefly, appearing for less than 2/10ths of a second. That’s too fast for our eyes to scan the pattern, much less attempt to consciously remember it, so the chimps probably have a better eidetic memory than we do — meaning they have photographic recall.

The researchers suggested two possible reasons for this: humans may have given up some memory and processing skills in order to develop those areas of the brain for other uses, like speech. The difference might also have to do with age; the chimps tested were young, and the task requires a skill children have, but which fades with age. (Apparently, in a later test, Ayumu’s mother, Ai did worse than the college students, so they can take some comfort in that.)

On a personal note, the mention of children losing a sort of photographic memory with age interested me - I had something akin to it up until high school, when it started to fail. I chalked the loss up to some health issues, but maybe it was just normal maturing.

For those of you into such things, here’s a link to the actual study (or at least an abstract of it): Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees

________________________________

MINDTWEAK: I still have a photographic memory, you know. It’s just that I forget to take the lens cap off.

________________________________