Mindframe

General George B. “Little Mac” McClellan was the Union force commander during the Civil War. Beloved by his men, and a stickler for training, you’d think it might be him that we remember over Ulysses S Grant, former Union general and later the 18th President. But Lincoln eventually made Grant the Northern army’s leader for a single, rather important reason: Grant was willing to engage the enemy. McClellan, despite an overwhelming number of troops and material, appeared to be allergic to battle. McClellan’s strategy seemed to be waiting for just the right moment when the perfect nexus of geography, troop force, weather, and adequate supplies would present itself.  History tells us that early in the war it never did—or more importantly, that it never does. Which brings me to glucose, the energy our brains and bodies run on. As a resource, it’s something our system tends to be stingy with.  Most of us expend energy only when we deem it absolutely necessary. Not a whole l...

In January of 2013, I wrote a post on one of neuroscience’s most famous cases. New details make it necessary to retell the story. It’s the tale of railroad foreman Phineas Gage. Imagine a beautiful day on September 13, 1848 in the Vermont countryside. It’s about 4:30 in the afternoon. James K. Polk, ‘young hickory’, is the current president and the Civil War hasn’t ripped the country apart yet. The hottest thing in modern technology? The railroad train. To that end, a Rutland Burlington railroad crew is finishing up a long day of drilling holes several feet deep into the stubborn concrete granite. Now the work of tamping explosive charges down into the holes has begun. When the explosives are discharged, the granite will be blown apart and the next section of track can be laid. It’s dangerous and deadly work if you’re a tamper. Mistakes are almost always fatal.  Five foot six Phineas Gage is a compact but strong tamper. He’s had his tamping rod engraved with his initials...

When it comes to Carol Dweck’s concepts of mindset, northwestern Alabama might not be the first region that leaps into your mind. And yet sitting on the north bank of the Tennessee River is an unlikely success story, almost a perfect illustration of just how much can go right when growth-minded attitudes are in place.   Growth mindset, of course, is the attitude that skill and intelligence can always be improved with effort. It frames challenges as opportunities, failures as lessons to be learned, and success as a result of pushing oneself. On the other hand, fixed mindset holds talent as something inborn and innate. The prospect of failure is a terrifying specter lurking over every risk, threatening to show you were never that great after all.  Even if you're familiar with these ideas, the story of Muscle Shoals, Alabama is a beautiful illustration of the importance of attitude.   In 1965, songwriter and musician Rick Hall opened up a recording studio ...

When you hear the term "spaced learning", you might think it has to do with learning that takes place while you're "spaced out.’   But spaced learning is the less-than-catchy phrase used to describe a scientific breakthrough in memory acquisition. Learning is fundamentally about sticking something into your memory for retrieval later. During a learning episode, information first moves into your short-term memory and creates a new neural pathway. If that pathway is repeatedly stimulated, it triggers the brain to transfer the information into your long-term memory. The neural pathway acts as both conduit and code for that information upload. Therefore, repetition is key to long-term learning. This process has been well known in the scientific community for some time. But what if there was a way to speed up learning, to learn an entire history module that would normally take a month, in about an hour? In his  Scientific American article " Making Memor...

Have you ever been in a meeting where no matter what, you can’t stay focused? You know it will be disastrous if you actually succumb to sleep, especially when there’s the possibility of drool involved, but you’re still fighting not to nod off. If there’s a window in the room, it’s pure torture. You dare not look out for fear of ‘going all Walter Mitty,’ and finding yourself in full-blown daydream mode, helping the industrious wasp on the other side of the glass build its nest. (Okay, yes, I looked out—but just for a second. Wasps are fascinating little creatures, aren’t they?) You can thank your brain’s insula for all of this, according to Daniel Levitin in his new book The Organized Mind . To conserve energy, your brain automatically slips into what neuroscientists call the ‘default mode,’ named by researcher Marcus Raichle. This is a natural state somewhere between sleep and conscious attentiveness. Whenever you pay attention, your brain is burning glucose reserves. You lite...