Brains On Purpose™

Read all about it in the New York Times: Brains on purpose = self-directed neuroplasticity

The phrase "brains on purpose" was included in a blog post this weekend published in the New York Times:

One can decide to be a more attentive and compassionate partner, mindful of the other’s motives, hurts and longings. Breaking old habits isn’t easy, since habits are deeply ingrained neural shortcuts, a way of slurring over details without having to dwell on them. Couples often choose to rewire their brains on purpose [emphasis added], sometimes with a therapist’s help, to ease conflicts and strengthen their at-one-ness.

Yes, we all can choose to rewire our brains on purpose. We've been saying that around here at this blog for a few years now. It was great fun to see the phrase in a national newspaper.

The New York Times post is a very short overview of some aspects of interpersonal neurobiology and neuroplasticity. Click here to read "The Brain on Love."

Note: (added March 27, 2012): Another article which picks up the phrase "brains on purpose": "How love goes to one’s head" (Mercator.net).

Note (added April 6, 2012): Although I don't often refer to a New Age guru, Deepak Chopra makes some good points in responding to the New York Times article and criticizing the materialist point of view: "Can Your Brain Fall in Love?" (San Francisco Chronicle). Excerpt:

Yet the basic premise of the article is problematic. She doesn't crudely claim that your brain is in love and therefore you are, too. (We suppose that's why the article is titled "The Brain on Love' rather than "The Brain in Love"). But at bottom it's still the standard materialist argument, bolstered by tons of data from neuroimaging, which fails to separate brain from mind. When a person experiences love, the brain registers and expresses that experience through electrical and chemical reactions, the way a radio playing music registers and plays every note that Mozart wrote. But the brain isn't in love any more than the radio is enjoying music.

NEW KINDS OF SMART: Free resource on brain science and learning

Click to read New Kinds of Smart: How the Science of Learnable Intelligence is Changing Education online and at no charge. Although the book is written for educators, it has much that is informative to conflict professionals, too. As I have often said, moving towards the resolution of a dispute must involve learning, by both mediator and parties.

Excerpt from the book:

The book works like this. It has eight core chapters, each of which follows a similar format:

A specific piece of research which illustrates the theme of the chapter.

Getting to grips with. An overview of scientific and educational research relevant to the chapter.

Starting out. Examples of what schools that are just beginning to work with the ideas in the chapter are doing.

Going deeper. More advanced examples of the ways in which schools are working with the ideas in the chapter.

Ideas into practice. Questions to prompt thinking, reflection,discussion, action and further reading.

At an appropriate moment in each chapter we have also included auseful tool to enable you immediately to see how you could  move from thinking into action.

Read more about the book here at Amazon. Or quickly scan through New Kinds of Smart here, reading just the sidebars to see if the book is a fit with your interests.

Do you think fast or slow? Typically most of us are fast most of the day

That I have not yet mentioned one of last year's books is surprising. I thought I had recommended it to you, but noticed this evening that I haven't. It was for me a must-read, so my omission is not minor. Below I link to an interview of its author Dr. Daniel Kahneman which may help you decide if you want to read Thinking, Fast and Slow.

From "The Truth About How We Think" (Gallup Management Journal):

Thinking, Fast and Slow explains that people use two methods of thinking -- System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast, automatic, and context oriented. It accepts as true whatever seems coherent to your worldview at the moment. If you're worried about your work performance and your boss walks by looking angry, for instance, System 1 will tell you that your boss is mad at you.

System 2 is slower, deliberative, and analytical. System 2 would tell you that your boss' commute is an hour long on a heavily congested road, and his drive might have been horrible that morning. The problem with System 2 is that

Using games to educate and solve problems: Playing with conflict and brains

Over the years, the decades, I have been time after time convinced of the value of games to teach, and so recently have been researching game design. I want to create my own educational games. The topic is wide-ranging and opinions on every aspect, even the definition of game, are many. Unfortunately the number of books and articles on the actual how-to of designing is sparse. At this blog post, I will post what I find in my search. Do you recommend any resources I can add below?

The book I have found most interesting because it is almost a philosophical take on games is The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses; unfortunately reading it will not equip you to create your own game but will allow you to thoroughly evaluate one you've already designed.

Games focus on health, wealth, contentment, fun, war, much more—and the list grows daily. My emphasis right now is conflict resolution. Many of us have been using games in ADR training for decades and have found them beneficial for learning: Everything from a multitude of versions of Prisoners' Dilemma to Med-Arb. Several people with whom I have talked think it is time for a new crop of games to teach about conflict resolution and a number of people are working on design, myself included.

Let's look at an example of a teaching game. Although not focused on conflict resolution, here's one that looks at our other focus here: brains! From the news release:

AXON offers players a rare glimpse of how the brains is formed and an ‘inside the brain’ introduction to the strange world of neurons, proteins and axons.

Click to play the game.

At Gamasutra, the place where the news release about AXON was posted, you will find much information about game design. I enjoyed the three-part series on timing in storytelling. Story, by the way, is a critical component of many games. I also was glad I took the time to read Improv Acting And Game Development.

More soon. I will continue to post resources here at this blog post as I find them.

• "Interactivity and Reward-Related Neural Activation during a Serious Videogame" (PLoS ONE)
• "A video game that involves killing cancer cells, activates parts of the brain involved in motivation" (CNet)-About the research at the PLoS ONE link immediately above
• "My View: A Game-Changing Major" (CNN.com)-Game design is being taught in college
• "Cognitive Flow: The Psychology of Great Game Design" (Gamasutra)
• Slide presentation on gameification (MPI)-on how game principles can create engagement for meetings and events
• "Adult Learning Theory in Games and Simulations" (LEEF Blog)
• Gamification Wiki 
• "Serious Games Taxonomy: Game Theory Part 1" "...Part 2" (LEEF Blog)
• "All The World’s A Game" (TechCrunch)
• Video: "How to Use Games to Excel at Life and Work" (99%)
• Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success
• "The Gamification of Education Infographic" (Knewton)
• "Motivations of Play in Online Games" (Journal of CyberPsychology and Behavior)
• Chapter 6 of Art of Game Design: "The Game Begins with an Idea"-The whole book is online here.
• "Are you an achiever, explorer, socializer, or killer: Is conflict resolution a game?" (idealawg)
• "Why Do Games Need Neuroscience? or, The Importance of Having a Theory" (AndrewHsu.com)
• TED Talks on gaming
• "First Steps in Board Game Design" (EDTEC)

Even though factual, this short lesson on how neurons communicate may make you smile

What a fine job BrainU has done in creating an animation to teach us about our neurons and snyapses. Click to watch "The Story of the Synapse." It is educational—and fun.

From the BrainU Web site:

A unique neuroscience program for Minnesota students and teachers, BrainU provides teachers with three years of neuroscience training, materials, and staff support to bring brain science to their students. In these professional workshops, participants receive updates on the latest in neuroscience research -- discussion is complemented with hands-on activities and lab work. Teachers also receive curriculum materials to aid them in using neuroscience topics in support of Minnesota Intermediate and Middle Level standards. The program was expanded in 2008 to include high school teachers.

Tempests and tales: challenges to the study of sex differences in the brain

The debate as to what differences, if any, exist between the brains of men and women, boys and girls, is nothing if not spirited. Lest we make the mistake that this question is settled, here's a reminder that it is not. (I saw this article recently on the Facebook wall of the Neuroanthropology Interest Group.)

Excerpt from "Tempests and tales: challenges to the study of sex differences in the brain" (Biology of Sex Differences):

The topic of sex differences in brain and behavior continues to garner broad interest and generate considerable controversy. A spate of popular books in the past decade has heralded many of the recent advances in the study of the biological basis of human brain differences in relation to sex and gender. Volumes such as Doreen Kimura's Sex and Cognition [1], Simon Baron-Cohen's The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain [2], Melissa Hines's Brain Gender [3] and Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain [4] have reviewed, and in some instances overinterpreted, the current state-of-the-art. This flurry of attention has also generated lightning rods for criticism, as evidenced by the two books reviewed here: Rebecca M Jordan-Young's Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences [5] and Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create a Difference [6]. Both books contain much of merit that we think readers of the Biology of Sex Differences will agree with, but both books can be vexing in the ways the scientific study of sex differences in brain and behavior is portrayed and the current state-of-the-art is presented.

...

Cordelia Fine's penning of Delusions of Gender was apparently motivated by her observation of her son's kindergarten

Interview of authors of new book EMOTIONAL LIFE OF YOUR BRAIN

Click to watch Charlie Rose conduct a short interview of Richie Davidson and Sharon Begley about their book Emotional Life of Your Brain. In reading the book, I particularly appreciated that it reminds the reader of two things:

• We each are unique and thus one size does not fit all
• We can change our brains (and thus behavior) if we want to.

Note (added March 15, 2012): Click for an interview  of the authors by Diane Rehm of NPR.

Poor impulse control keeps children from sharing

News release from Max-Planck-Gesellschaft:

Late development of the prefrontal cortex explains why children find it hard to suppress selfish impulses

When children fail to share fairly with each other, it may not be due to poor understanding of what constitutes right and wrong; after all, they grasp early on that fairness and generosity can be advantageous. However, scientists at the Leipzig-based Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences have discovered that it takes some time before they possess the neuronal preconditions to act in accordance with this understanding. The prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain that is important for behavioural control, develops relatively late, so that sharing is more easily said than done for primary school children. The finding could impact educational strategies designed to promote successful social behaviour, the scientists write in the March 8th issue of the journal Neuron.

Sharing possessions is an essential theme in every community, but fraught with conflict. A question which remains enigmatic is how and at what stage of development fair sharing occurs spontaneously. Do children suddenly understand what is fair from one day to the next, and then behave accordingly? Or do they simply become better at controlling selfish impulses?

Using game theory, scientists have been studying strategic behaviour in sharing situations. Researchers Nikolaus Steinbeis, Boris Bernhardt and Tania Singer used two of the best-known experiments in this field – the Dictator Game and the Ultimatum Game – with a total of 174 schoolchildren between six and 13 years of age.

In this context, the children were given poker chips which they could later exchange for age-appropriate gifts. First,

Neural reuse: Yay, team brain

I have talked before about brain areas, pieces of brain real estate, restructuring as new teams, but I was mainly referring to situations where one part is damaged and another part of the brain is recruited to help. The theory of neural reuse tells us that team efforts may occur in the healthy brain, too. From "Exploring the Underpinnings of Cognition" ( a news release from Franklin & Marshall College):

Several years ago, [Michael] Anderson’s research was often rejected for publication in part, the professor says, because of its nonstandard approach. His work centered on neural reuse, a theory that explains cognitive function as the result of regions of the brain interacting in “multiple coalitions.” The idea runs against traditional thinking that regions of the brain are specialized for specific tasks.

“Individual regions of the brain are part of different teams,” said Anderson, who also authors a blog on Psychology Today. “Neural reuse is a different way of looking at cognitive function. I can have different roles, like being a father, husband, teacher and researcher. I think the brain is also like that. The regions of the brain aren’t specialized the way we think.”

In 2010, Anderson succeeded in publishing his research in the high-impact venue Behavioral and Brain Sciences. His paper argued that neural reuse offers a distinct take on the evolution and development of the brain, the degree of modularity of brain organization, and the degree of localization of cognitive function.

He believes neural reuse and embodied cognition—the realization that the brain is not the sole organ of cognition—are poised to become the dominant lenses through which we explore human cognition and behavior. ...

More on neural reuse:

• "Neural reuse: A fundamental organizational principle of the brain" (article by Anderson in Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
• Peer commentary on the article: "Neural Re-Use in the Social and Emotional Brain" (Behavioral and Brain Sciences)

March in Austria: Controversies in Neurology, including mindfulness and neuroplasticity

Coming up next week in Vienna is the 6th World Congress on Controversies in Neurology (CONy). Jeffrey Schwartz will be speaking on "The brain, culture and religion" and will be moderating a panel on "Mindfulness and the Clinical Relevance of Human Neuroplasticity." Click to see descriptions of all the programs.

On March 5, Jeff will be a guest speaker in Italy for the MBA program at CIMBA.