Can exercise improve cognitive function?

The date of the article is November, 2007 - but the evidence seems strong that exercise improves cognitive function - and it is doubtful that it has been overturned.

According to the authors (see below):  "In people, fitness training slows the age-related shrinkage of the frontal cortex, which is important for executive function. In rodents, exercise increases the number of capillaries in the brain, which should improve blood flow, and therefore the availability of energy, to neurons. Exercise may also help the brain by improving cardiovascular health, preventing heart attacks and strokes that can cause brain damage. Finally, exercise causes the release of growth factors, proteins that increase the number of connections between neurons, and the birth of neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region important for memory. Any of these effects might improve cognitive performance, though it’s not known which ones are most important."

Sandra Aamodt is the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience. Sam Wang is an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton. They are the authors of the forthcoming “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.”

Apple's Advertising Takes Left and Right Brain Into Consideration

After reading this article, I recognized that Apple was catering their advertising to a right brain audience.  Now, according to the author, they are trying to position themselves as "scientific, business-like and productive. Pretty left-brained thinking…and pretty effective."

Innovators, Thought Leaders to Converge in Sacramento for TEDx Event

On Saturday, November 20th 2010, some of the areas most talented speakers, innovators, musicians and artists will converge at the Tsakopoulos Library Galleria to deliver the “talk of their lives” in 18 minutes or less. Under the theme of “Celebrating Youth” speakers will share their creative ideas, projects and inventions. Tickets for the event are issued by invitation only. To be invited to the event, you can e-mail the event director, Brandon Weber at brandon@tedxsacramento.com.

The first TEDx event for Sacramento was held this past April and was attended by roughly 200 people. Speakers from as far away as Idaho came to speak to an enthusiastic crowd packed with local thought-leaders, entrepreneurs, public servants, academics, artists and musicians. One such idea presented last year, Solar Roadways, went on to win G.E.’s Eco-Magination prize and has received federal funding. Our other speakers and performers were no less extraordinary or interesting.

Speakers this year will be giving inspiring talks around the topic of “Celebrating Youth” as part of TED’s celebration of International Youth Day. The event will be a collaboration with more than 25 cities, including Tokyo, Singapore, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Toronto, India, Montreal, NASA, Melbourne and Budapest. Plans are also in the works to live-stream the event, both to our website as well as to an iPhone/iPad app created by the people at TED.

While the event will focus on the extraordinary ideas and accomplishments of youth, the audience will be no less impressive -- made up of 100 of the areas top thought-leaders and ideators, educators, public servants, technologists, professionals, as well as a select group of amazing youth.

Speakers will include the minds behind such amazing projects as The M.I.T. Media Lab's "Scratch" and "Lifelong Kindergarten" projects, the U.C.Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, one of the world's foremost authorities on neurological disorders in children, a teen journalist, the creator of a ground breaking technology that democratizes the world of textbooks as well as a member of the Board of Directors of Wikimedia, a man who has brought health care to thousands of women and children in Africa, a developer who uses wireless technology to affect the behavior of children, a peek at the amazing things being done by child entrepreneurs around the world, as well as music and ballet performances by youth.

Using the simple theme of “ideas worth spreading,” TED offers Amazing speakers, powerful connections and unforgettable moments. Bringing together the world’s leading thinkers and doers, TED events have been called “The ultimate brain spa,” “Davos for optimists” and “A journey into the future, in the company of those creating it.” Speakers at TED events - some of the world’s most fascinating, innovative and influential individuals - are challenged to give “the talk of their life” in 18 minutes or less. Attendees are as exceptional as the speakers. Sharing happens from the stage or in the lounge. It’s the conversation that will change your life. TEDx is a new extension initiative of the TED organization. TEDx Youth @ Sacramento will follow the TED form and spirit.

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED Conference invites the world's leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Their talks are then made available, free, at TED.com.
TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The annual TED Conference takes place in Long Beach, California, with simulcast in Palm Springs; TEDGlobal is held each year in Oxford, UK. TED's media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily, and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TEDTalk to be translated by volunteers worldwide.

TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world are given the opportunity to put their wishes into action; TEDx, which offers individuals or groups a way to organize local, independent TED-like events around the world; and the TEDFellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

About TEDx (x = independently organized event)

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (Subject to certain rules and regulations).

Follow TED on Twitter at twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at facebook.com/TED.

TED2011, "The Rediscovery of Wonder," will be held February 28-March 4, 2011, in Long Beach, California, with the TEDActive simulcast in Palm Springs, California.

TEDx San Diego is streaming right now! Check it out.

Thanks to Brandon Weber for the link.

TEDx Sacramento (coming on 11/20) will be using a similar format. Stay tuned for details.

Click on the title (above) to go directly to Ustream.

Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together

What if you had to decide between being an astronaut or being a dancer?

From the TED website: "Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, a dancer ... Telling stories from her own education and from her time in space, she calls on educators to teach both the arts and sciences, both intuition and logic, as one -- to create bold thinker

In 1992, Mae Jemison was the first African-American woman to go into space. She's become a crusader for science education -- and for a new vision of learning that combines arts and sciences,…"

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Artist/Neurocientist Collaboration To Examine The Way We See Things

Artist/Neurocientist Collaboration To Examine The Way We See Things

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy

“If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong though. It's Hambone.”

-- Jack Handy

Einstein on Rational Thinking

"I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking." -- Albert Einstein


"The brain is a monstrous, beautiful mess."

"The brain is a monstrous, beautiful mess. Its billions of nerve cells-called neurons-lie in a tangled web that displays cognitive powers far exceeding any of the silicon machines we have built to mimic it."


William F. Allman (from Apprentices of Wonder. Inside the Neural Network Revolution, 1989

Various Left Brain vs. Right Brain Tests

Learning to Change...

Thanks to Steven W. Anderson of Web 2.0 Classroom for providing this link on Twitter.

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity | Video on TED.com

Thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert for delivering this inspiring talk about creativity. You nailed it.

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity | Video on TED.com

IQ

What is IQ? How is it determined? What does it measure? Are there more important measurements - maybe a measurement using Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory, or a measurement which looks at how well someone can synthesize information?

The Genius in All of Us

Working Memory More Important Than IQ

If what this study suggests is true, shouldn't the schools be focusing more on cognitive skills, i.e. working memory? It really makes one wonder why there is still so much emphasis on IQ and standardized test scores. If only there was a way to quantify how well a student synthesized information or how they performed in a game or project. Oh wait..... project based learning.

Right Brain Thinkers on Facebook

These guys have the right idea.

Click on the title above to see what they're doing on Facebook.

Zoidge: weird combinations of nothing important

When the economy is in shambles and times are tough, sometimes it helps to delve into the world of non-sense for a quick laugh.

Click the title above for a quick dose of "zoidge."

Non Equilibrium Thermodynamics: a New Model for Teaching

Drink a cup of coffee and get into hyper-focus mode before you read this next piece. It is not for the casual reader. This is an excerpt from my thesis paper “Thriving on the Edge of Chaos: an Argument for a Complex Adaptive Theory of Education.”

The simple translation is this: students learn better from the bottom up.

As a teacher of high school social studies, I began experimenting with the idea of using an interactive game not as a side-unit of instruction nor as a supplement to the curriculum but as the curriculum itself. In doing this, I became more of a facilitator (creating a feedback loop) and switched from the use of lecture to an open-ended game format in order to deliver course content. I changed the structure of my classes to give students more opportunities for creative and critical thinking. As the classes changed in this way from the use of a traditional hierarchy to a lateral distribution of power, or heterarchy, I observed profound changes. The classes experienced a major increase in participation and, arguably, thinking as a result of complex, higher order behavior.

During the use of this game (called Global Challenge) I realized something interesting was taking place; a phenomenon of sorts. It remained an idea without a model for many years until two things happened:

1. I discovered a book by the famous biologist Edward O. Wilson entitled Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998). This book opened up the door on how one might merge ideas and subject areas in order to discover universal truths. There was occasional mention in the book about how physicists do not work enough with mathematicians and biologists, even though one might find answers for their area of study in a completely different discipline. The idea occurred that, by analogy and metaphor, professionals could find universal answers. One might even see the possibility for a “borderless,” 24-hour learning environment, uninhibited by pre-fabricated, school-imposed barriers on learning.

2. On a trip to England in early 2002, I discovered another book in the London Museum of Science called Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software (2001) by science writer Steven Johnson. This book exposed some other ideas, mainly the notion that the most productive and creative behavior seemed to happen from the ground up (Johnson, 2001). This book, and discussions with a long-time friend, led to the discovery of something more profound – chaos theory. Chaos theory disproved the second law of thermodynamics and offered hope that things do not have to disintegrate.

Since entropy and thermodynamics are important to the model or metaphor being presented in this paper, they are worthy of deeper analysis here. According to Gleick

(1987) the concept of entropy derives from thermodynamics and is a part of the Second Law (of thermodynamics). Thermodynamics, according to the Encarta World English Dictionary (1999), refers to a branch of physics dealing with the conversions of energy from one form to another “and how these affect temperature, pressure, volume, mechanical action and work.”

Gleick wrote that entropy was the tendency of systems in the universe to move towards a state of increasing disorder. Gleick also noted that this term has taken root in the non-scientific world and has woven itself into our culture. He gave as examples the non- scientific explanations for disintegrating societies and economic decay. People, it seems, use the term entropy to describe any system that is likely to fall apart.

In thermodynamics, certain things are true such as losing heat when transferring one form of energy to another. This would make perfect efficiency impossible. In addition, Gleick (1987) pointed out that the universe, because of this, was a “one way street.” A process tending towards disorder could not be reversed. These things may be true in the world of thermodynamics, he pointed out, but are not so true in complexity. He went on to say that thermodynamics did not explain the creating of amino acids, microorganisms, self-reproducing plants and animals, and the complexity, even, of the human brain. Systems such as these did not fall victim to entropy, but rose to a higher level.

When Johnson (2001) wrote about non-equilibrium thermodynamics, he spoke of the work done by Ilya Prigogine in the 1950s, and defined non-equilibrium thermodynamics as “environments where the laws of entropy are temporarily overcome, and higher-level order may spontaneously emerge out of underlying chaos” (p. 52).

Putting these things together, one might move in the direction of accepting complexity as a better system to use when defining and explaining the social system in use in education. Where thermodynamics refers to the transfer and conversion of energy, complexity is more of the working model, large enough to explain all systems. Entropy has become an excuse from which cynics can look to explain disintegration of social systems. When, in fact, such disintegration may be because of faulty design, imposition of too much order, lack of balance in the system and, most importantly, a model not suitable to handle random variables. At this point, these are suppositions but are worth considering.

The question naturally emerged as to whether there was some way to make sense of all the disarray and confusion people found in their personal and professional lives. What if there was a larger order to things that humans simply were not seeing, one where order would arise out of seemingly meaningless interactions? What if chaos and confusion were part of a larger design and could lead to greater things?

From a psychological, emotional, and social viewpoint, this could revolutionize the way people think and interact, just knowing that everyday friction and random interactions might actually lead to something. In Consilience, Wilson (1998) argued that there may be a higher order, one that fuses or synthesizes many subjects at the same time; that there might be, in fact, some universal laws that underlie all knowledge. This made an excellent case for interdisciplinary studies. After reading Johnson, however, I became more interested in emergence and chaos theory, thinking that such ideas might make for an appropriate model for education. These two ideas, if synthesized, could form a model for a higher order of learning based on complexity.

Search Engine Obfuscation

Search Engine Obfuscation: Don’t Worry About Pleasing the Machines

Posted using ShareThis