I happened across this video of Stephen Wiltshire, an autistic man whose ability to remember incredible detail and draw it with near perfection is extraordinary. If he flies in a helicopter over a city just once, he can recreate the city perfectly in a drawing. The buildings have the right number of columns and windows. The perspective is accurate. The numerous side streets and unnamed buildings are all there. 

In this video, Stephen, who is sometimes known as “The Living Camera”, flies over Rome and demonstrates his incredible talent by drawing a panorama of the city. Watching him draw is another reminder of just how amazing the brain can be.

Back in June, we launched our Thinkfood Recipe of the Week program, to bring a brain healthy recipe to your inbox each week. Today we are pleased to announce that the physical cookbook is here and available for purchase on our website and on Amazon.com!

ThinkFood is a cookbook  that features brain-healthy recipes. We know the science—but, since we’re not chefs ourselves, we asked for help from the food blogging community in creating the recipes. The result is 50 delicious, original brain-healthy recipes, each from a different blogger.

The book is also beautiful, with full color photos of recipes and ingredients, and a clean, readable layout. (Kudos to Jason Whelan from top design firm Agency Charlie for the excellent design and photos.) This attractive book would be a great gift  for anyone who likes cooking brain healthy, delicious recipes (or for yourself.)

We are giving away a couple Thinkfood cookbooks this week to you, our supporters… and our first giveaway is RIGHT HERE! Tell us in the comments what your favorite food is, and be entered to win a free copy of the book.

P.S. We’ll be giving more Thinkfood books away on Twitter and Facebook- so please follow us there if you’re interested in entering again!

Our eyes take in a lot of information from the world, but limitations in brain processing means that we can only pay attention to a small portion of it. As a consequence we often fail to notice important information that is clearly in our field of view because our attention is focused elsewhere. One compelling example of this limitation is known as “attentional blindness”. An excellent example of attentional blindness is illustrated in this video–a nice demonstration of the importance of attention in vision.

Good visual attentional performance is fundamentally important for safe driving. One computer-based test of visual attention has proven to be a very good predictor of crash risk. The test is known as UFOV (for “Useful Field of View”) and measures the area of the visual field that a person can attend to in a single glance.  A person with a a reduced UFOV has an increased crash risk because potential hazards are less likely to be noticed. Studies have shown that the UFOV test is more predictive than any other cognitive or visual test and far more predictive than the current visual test given at most DMVs.

Continue reading "DriveSharp: Proven To Help Keep You Safe On The Road" »

Many people think that eating nuts is good for your brain. This is true, but not all nuts are created equally. There is great variation in the health benefits to be found in different types of nuts, especially from a brain health perspective.

• Walnuts are the top nut for brain health. They have a significantly high concentration of DHA, a type of Omega-3 fatty acid. Among other things, DHA has been shown to protect brain health in newborns, improve cognitive performance in adults, and prevent or ameliorate age-related cognitive decline. One study even shows that mothers who get enough DHA have smarter kids. Just a quarter cup of walnuts provides nearly 100% of the recommended daily intake of DHA.
• Almonds and Hazelnuts are two of the most concentrated sources of vitamin E available, and vitamin E intake is generally associated with less age-related cognitive decline. In one study, participants who received vitamin E improved statistically and clinically in some memory and verbal measures, while participants who received a placebo did not. 1/4 cup of almonds or hazelnuts packs in nearly 50% of the RDA for vitamin E.
• Peanuts have not been extensively studied as a brain healthy food, but there is good reason to believe that they offer brain benefits. Peanuts are high in niacin (1/2 cup of peanuts offers about 50% of the RDA for niacin.) Studies have correlated niacin deficiencies with a higher incidence of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s. There has also been preliminary research that suggests that eating peanuts may help stave off Parkinson’s.

Continue reading "Nuts For Brain Health!" »

As a glass collector and CEO of a neuroscience company, I was challenge by and enjoyed reading Iconoclast by Gregory Berns.  He highlights how a combination of environmental factors changed the inputs to Dale Chihuly’s perception of the world around him, changing his approach to creating art.  The book has a number of other examples of the positive power of neuroplasticity that changed the way many of the individuals used as examples in the book processed the information the received across business, academia, sports and the arts.  Berns also points out that looking at a problem differently and acting on that different view set up conflicts with more conventional views and starts the book with a harrowing story of the rise and subsequent fall of Howard Armstrong.

The entire book sets up a tension between perception, its role in innovation, and the challenges (many of which are self-inflicted) any inventor must overcome to turn an invention (a new idea) into an innovation (making an impact on the world from an invention).   I wrote about invention vs. innovation earlier this year but this book opened a new area for me about the ability to shape the brain’s approach to fear of failure.

I worked with an individual who was fond of saying, “Believe it and you will see it.”  That approach to life does alter the perception of what is possible that can lead to invention.  The next key is to frame that invention in a way that others can follow you and reshape their beliefs.

Five neuroscientists are on a rafting trip in Utah… does this sound the beginning of a joke?  It’s not.  The New York Times published an interesting article on a group of neuroscientists who want to understand how our use of digital devices affects how we think and behave.  The neuroscientists were also trying to understand how a nature-centric experience might counter the distractions of technology; they unplugged (to varying degrees) and took off to do some rafting on the San Juan River.

Admittedly, the article is light on conclusions, but points out that attention can be compromised by both the anticipation and reality of constant information flow.  The group doesn’t share a common view of how our brains are affected by technology use and rest, but they all acknowledge this is an important emerging area for brain science.

Reading the article, I was struck by how much we still don’t know about the brain and how hungry people are for information on it.  The article is interesting in that it raises questions and gives insights into the neuroscientists’ thought processes; however, there are no weighty findings here.  Nevertheless, the article raced to the top of The New York Times most e-mailed list.  The brain is clearly a hot topic.

The New York Times published a very interesting article describing a new study that suggests that brain trauma–like concussions and other head injuries–can over time cause damage that looks like Lou Gehrig’s disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS). This might mean that some people diagnosed with ALS actually are suffering from the long-term effects of repeated mild head injuries. This fits in with a lot of new evidence that repeated mild head injuries can have very significant long-term effects on brain health, even if each individual injury seems like it has no lasting effect.

For further commentary on the media coverage of this story, also check out the Neurocritic – an always interesting blog that covers the media coverage of news from neuroscience.

This week, we learned that Brain Plasticity Inc. (BPI), a new “technology incubator”, has received $3.65 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct research on software-based programs. They have been awarded $3 million to work on creating and testing a cognitive program for people with schizophrenia, as well as $650,000 for people suffering from visual attention deficits as a result of stroke.

So why are we so excited that another company is getting funded to study this? Well… aside from the fact that the research offers the promise of innovative, non-invasive, potentially effective therapies for people greatly in need- we are proud to report that BPI is basing both programs on technology originally developed here at Posit Science. We have licensed the technology so that the BPI researchers can continue to innovate and test further applications of brain plasticity-based exercises in additional conditions. This is a fantastic outcome, as it helps us in our global mission to bring science to the people and provide real-world, proven, clinically tested cognitive solutions for people who need them. BPI is carrying our work further and faster and seeking hope and help for millions of people. So we have good reason to be proud and happy about their success.

Continue reading "Brain Plasticity Inc. to Receive .65 Million Funding for Schizophrenia & Stroke Research" »

Music is a fundamental and universal means of expression. The ability to recognize rhythm and melody is a core function in all of our brains that can be traced back before speech. From an evolutionary standpoint, music precedes language. Our brains are wired to respond to music and we respond at multiple levels, from basic recognition of tones and timing to deeper recognition of melody and finally emotional responses based on the music itself or memories connected to the music.

We have written about music and the brain on this blog before, on topics like how music benefits people with brain injuries, a discussion of the top 12 brain-based reasons music as therapy works, and how jazz improvisation changes your brain. This amazing demonstration by Bobby McFerrin shows how the brain knows and can respond to cues instinctively. A series of books on the topic that we’ve highlighted in the past, This Is Your Brain on Music and Musicophilia, talk in-depth about the connection between music and the brain.

Continue reading "Music and the Brain: Further Evidence on The Power of Sound" »

Do you ever read about a study that’s received a million dollar grant and think, “Who would spend a million dollars to study THAT? And what kind of scientists would want to spend their time on it?”

That’s what I first thought when I heard about research on sea slug brains. I couldn’t figure out how the world really benefited from more detailed knowledge of the sea slug brain (specifically, the Aplysia californica sea slug, pictured on the right.) I thought there were more important things to study.

I was wrong. As it turns out, sea slug studies have contributed tremendously to knowledge about how all brains work–including our own. There are a couple of very compelling reasons to study the Aplysia brain: for starters, they have some of the biggest brain cells around. While the neurons in a human brain are incredibly tiny, Aplysia neurons are as big as 1 mm–visible to the naked eye. (That’s huge in the world of neurons!) And Aplysia only have 20,000 brain cells or so, while humans have 100 billion to keep track of.

Continue reading "Studying Sea Slugs?" »