Mindframe

Exercise: you know you should, and yet for many, vanity might not be enough to get you on the old treadmill first thing in the morning. So if that isn’t getting you out of bed and into your sneakers, perhaps your brain might do it. No, not do your exercise, but rather, provide the best argument for working up a sweat. It turns out that during strenuous physical activity, your brain produces a neural chemical called brain-derived neurotropic factor, or BDNF for short. In his book Spark, The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise , Harvard psychiatrist John J Ratey refers to BDNF as “Miracle-Gro for the brain.” Why the fertilizer reference? BDNF strengthens the brain’s electrical connections by boosting their strength and vitality. This means that BDNF plays a vital role in the brain’s ability to rewire itself, often referred to as plasticity. In an interesting study done in Germany, two groups faced off on treadmills. The first group supplemented their 45-minute exercise routi...

Unlike Calvin here, most of us will probably never get the opportunity to have a face-to-face conversation between our current selves and our 6:30 selves, so to speak. That is a shame, because as Daniel Kahneman discusses in Thinking, Fast and Slow , the two of them don't necessarily know that much about each other. In trying to understand how the brain registers emotion, Kahneman outlines the divide between what he calls the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self." The experiencing self, or "8:30 Calvin", if you will, is you in the present. All it knows is whether or not you are having a good time in the moment. The remembering self, or "6:30 Calvin", on the other hand, looks back and tries to to sum up your overall impressions of past events. Which Calvin holds more sway in your judgements?  That prize goes to 6:30 Calvin. It makes a certain amount of sense. The trouble with living "in the now" is that every second ...

Are you lying to yourself every day? Depends: are you a "Bayesian Updater?" Hopefully you are. The term is named after Reverend Thomas Bayes. Around 1763, Bayes proposed a probability theory which stated that when you're confronted with facts contradicting your current beliefs, you change or update your beliefs. In his new book, Answers for Aristotle , University of Chicago’s Massimo Pigliuuci suggests that if humans are rational, then the Bayesian principle should be our default. Of course, modern science has done a great deal to de-emphasize the role of logic in decision-making. Even the great philosopher Aristotle, upon closer reading, suggests we are more rationalizers than rational. So if people aren't Bayesian Updaters, what are they? In their study of cognitive dissonance, Northwestern University professor Monica Prasad and her research team have identified six alternative strategies. Their work shines light on just how intelligent and well informed ind...

What do epilepsy, an out of body experience and your personal space bubble share in common? Mother-and-son science writers Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee explain the connection in their book, The Body has a Mind of its Own. Team Blakeslee begin their story in an unlikely place: the region of your brain behind your right ear. It’s known as your Right Angular Gyrus (RAG). Before an epilepsy operation, the surgeon’s standard procedure is to open up the skull and poke around a little to identify the various functional brain areas. Even though human brains share the same essential architecture, each brain is wired slightly differently. A quick round of poking and prodding is the best way to get a sense of the layout, and thus to know what not to cut. Since the brain doesn’t feel pain, this recon mission is done with the patient awake. The surgeon probes a given area, and the patient reports back what they are feeling. For example, a gentle touch on one area of your brain m...

“Good luck!” It’s a common expression in our lexicon. Obviously, on a gut level we have some sense of the importance of luck—that is, until things go our way. Suddenly, we relegate luck to the cheap seats as we bask in the spotlight, prepared to take full credit for our superior decision-making. Take the Quaker Oats Corporation, for example. In 1983, the CEO of Quaker Oats, William Smithburg, sampled some of an up-and-coming sports drink and decided to acquire the company. That beverage was Gatorade, and it was the beginning of a goldmine for Quaker Oats. So when Smithburg decided to buy Snapple in 1994 for $1.8 billion, he was unchallenged from within his organization. This was the Gatorade guy, after all; surely he knew what he was talking about. Media pundits disagreed, lambasting the decision before the deal was even struck. Did Smithburg’s superior decision-making prove them wrong? Well, no. Fast forward 3 years and Quaker Oats was desperately unloading Snapple at a...