The Creativity Crisis

For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.
...The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed.
...One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities.

Newsweek, July 10, 2010

Poor Memory Improved by One Simple Exercise?

A quick and easy exercise improves poor memory, lack of concentration, clumsiness and emotional instability .
EEG scans show that it synchronises right and left sides of the brain to improve thinking and memory.

* Step One: Stand with your feet about shoulder distance apart, toes pointing forward.
* Step Two: Hold your right ear lobe between your left thumb and finger, with the thumb on the outside of the lobe (we’re not joking).
* Step Three: Hold your left ear lobe between your right thumb and finger, again with you thumb on the outside of the lobe. You should now be holding both earlobes with your arms crossed over your chest, right arm on top (and we’re still not joking).
* Step Four: Look directly ahead and commence doing a body squat by slowly bending your knees and lowering your body toward the floor. Go as low as you comfortably can and then slowly raise yourself back to a standing position. Exhale as you squat and inhale as you stand.
* Step Five: Repeat the squats for 1 to 3 minutes, or 14 – 21 times, while continuing to hold your earlobes.

Results may be immediate or gradual. Concentration should certainly be stronger within 3 weeks. The exercise only needs to be done once a day but if concentration wanes it can be repeated as often as desired.

http://homeopathyplus.com.au/poor-memory-can-be-improved-by-one-simple-exercise

Digital Overload: Your Brain On Gadgets

The average person today consumes almost three times as much information as what the typical person consumed in 1960, according to research at the University of California, San Diego.

And The New York Times reports that the average computer user checks 40 websites a day and can switch programs 36 times an hour.

"It's an onslaught of information coming in today," says Times technology journalist Matt Richtel.

NPR, August 24, 2010

Studying Acupuncture, One Needle Prick at a Time

For at least 2,000 years Chinese healers have used acupuncture to treat pain and other ailments. Now Western doctors want proof that it works.

There is little dispute that people feel better after receiving the treatment, in which thin needles are inserted deeply into the skin at specific points on the body. But are they benefiting from acupuncture itself, or just getting a placebo effect?

The debate was fueled last week by a study in the journal Arthritis Care and Research.

New York Times, August 23, 2010

From Primitive Parts, A Highly Evolved Human Brain

From one perspective, the human brain is a masterpiece. From another, it's 3 pounds of inefficient jelly. Both views are accurate, and that's because our remarkable brain has been assembled from some very primitive parts.

"Although the things it can do are very wonderful and impressive, its design is very poor engineering in many respects," says David Linden, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the author of The Accidental Mind.

August 9, 2010, on NPR

The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers

How much do your kindergarten teacher and classmates affect the rest of your life?
Economists have generally thought that the answer was not much. Great teachers and early childhood programs can have a big short-term effect. But the impact tends to fade. By junior high and high school, children who had excellent early schooling do little better on tests than similar children who did not...

There has always been one major caveat, however, to the research on the fade-out effect. It was based mainly on test scores, not on a broader set of measures, like a child’s health or eventual earnings. As Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, says: “We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.”

Early this year, Mr. Chetty and five other researchers set out to fill this void. They examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. The children are now about 30, well started on their adult lives.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings — not yet peer-reviewed — at an academic conference in Cambridge, Mass. They’re fairly explosive.

July 27, 2010 via New York Times

Is Emotional Pain Necessary?

But for some people, the real issue raised by the bereavement exclusion is philosophical — or maybe the better word is existential. Dr. Allen Frances, the famous psychiatrist and a former editor of the DSM, says that more and more, psychiatry is medicalizing our experiences. That is, it is turning emotions that are perfectly normal into something pathological.

"Over the course of time, we've become looser in applying the term 'mental disorder' to the expectable aches and pains and sufferings of everyday life," Frances says. "And always, we think about a medication treatment for each and every problem."

-August 2, 2010 on NPR