Brains On Purpose™

Top 10 trends for 2014: This blog keeps you up to date on two

We're trendy here at Brains on Purpose. Two of our Categories (in the column over to your right) are on this year's top-10 list created by JWTIntelligence. They are:

2. DO YOU SPEAK VISUAL?: We’re shifting to a visual vocabulary that relies on photos, emojis, video snippets and other imagery, largely supplanting the need for text. “Visual” is a new lingo that needs to be mastered. [Our category here is "Drawings and Images."]

And . . .

10. MINDFUL LIVING: Consumers are developing a quasi-Zen desire to experience everything in a more present, conscious way. Once the domain of the spiritual set, mindful living is filtering into the mainstream, with more people drawn to the idea of shutting out distractions and focusing on the moment. [Our category is "Mindfulness."]

Watch for more posts on each topic as the year unfolds, including, of course, more about the neuroscience of visual communication and of mindfulness. Keep coming back; doing so will keep you hip and cool.

H/T: Susan Kaiser Greenland.

Unhappy? Have unhappy clients? Iain McGilchrist may have some answers about why, what to do

Dr. Iain McGilchrist, author of the acclaimed The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World has written a new ebook, news that will make those who appreciated his last book very happy. Why an ebook? From Yale Books Blog:

Since the publication of The Master and His Emissary there has been an staggering amount of interest in a potential follow-up from McGilchrist, who is a former psychiatric consultant and has taught English at Oxford. However, as McGilchrist’s bestselling book drew on more than twenty years of research, a new full-length book would be a significant undertaking. Instead, to coincide with the new paperback edition of The Master and His Emissary, Yale invited Iain to write one of the first in a new series of short, lively e-books by some of our most popular authors, in which he draws on his research into the role of the right and left hemispheres to address the crucial question: just why are modern Westerners so unhappy?

Click to buy the ebook The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning for just $1.50. Click to read an earlier post about Dr. McGilchrist: Are you involved in half-brained mediations? Let's promote full-brained conflict resolution.

Virtuous Tweeting: Do you really, really, really want to send that "science" Tweet?

Why do people pass on items before scrutinizing them? Some members of my Tweeter gang regularly Tweet press releases from such sources as Science Daily as if they were news. Then these Tweets are reTweeted and the peeping and chirping and crowing of Tweety birds grows louder and louder.

In a post from Arstechnica, the practice of treating such aggregators as PhysOrg and Science Daily as news was criticized:

[I]n a large number of contexts, these two sites are treated as credible sources of scientific information. Items posted there make frequent appearances on social news sites, and a number of people I've talked to have been shocked to discover that the majority of the sites' content is nothing more than rebranded press releases.

Ultimately, the job of editing and of peer review is to help ensure that only scientifically valid data and ideas end up in the literature. The job of the press should be to ensure that the public only receives reports of equal quality (or better, since the press can act as an additional layer of filtering). Unfortunately, with the rise of the press release, and of aggregators that disguise press releases as news content, the public is not being well served in this regard.

I have not forgotten a Tweet from Todd Stark last month in which he responded to this problem and wrote:

Aggregator problem reinforces the need to understand and filter before passing on. A new virtue for the 21st century!

A new virtue. I like that suggestion. Wouldn't it be nice if people did some digging prior to Tweeting? Even chickens don't eat

"Pseudoscience masquerading as neuroscience": Is there "a growing academic obsession with soundbites and 'impact'"?

Along the lines of two recent posts about silly science (here and here) is this article from today's Guardian about the possible problems with the public learning science (as opposed to pseudoscience) from researchers. Excerpt:

The famous philosopher Karl Popper once noted that genuine science and pseudoscience are difficult to distinguish. To the uninitiated they can look the same, sound the same and smell the same. If we ourselves, the so-called "experts", actively conspire to mix fantasy and reality, what hope can the public have of learning about genuine scientific discoveries?

From earlier in the article:

These questions highlight the unacceptable gulf between, on the one hand, the evidence-bound conclusions reached in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and on the other, the heavy spin applied by scientists to achieve publicity in

"Neurotalk: improving the communication of neuroscience research"

Abstract:

There is increasing pressure for neuroscientists to communicate their research and the societal implications of their findings to the public. Communicating science is challenging, and the transformation of communication by digital and interactive media increases the complexity of the challenge. To facilitate dialogue with the public in this new media landscape, we suggest three courses of action for the neuroscience community: a cultural shift that explicitly recognizes and rewards public outreach, the identification and development of neuroscience communication experts, and ongoing empirical research on the public communication of neuroscience.

Excerpt:

A cli­mate of trust, reciprocity and transparency is essential for any science that depends on the public for funding and for public participa­tion in research. Creating and maintaining such a climate poses several challenges for neuroscience. A record of misrepresenta­tive or sweeping claims, for example, can jeopardize trust and raise false expecta­tions. Neuroscience may be particularly vulnerable to exaggerated claims, such as ‘God spots in the brain’, because its findings can challenge widely held assumptions about sensitive social and behavioural phenomena.

There is also great potential for mis­understanding arising from the inherent complexity of neuroscience. As

Neuroscience to be included in upcoming international conference on contemplative practices in law and conflict resolution

Click to read more about this spring conference to be held at a law school in upper New York.

Applications being accepted for Penn's annual Neuroscience Boot Camp

Want to learn more about neuroscience? This event being held August 1 through 11, 2010, may be a good fit for you.

What's Neuroscience Boot Camp? From the Web site:

Neuroscience is increasingly relevant to a number of professions and academic disciplines beyond its traditional medical applications. Lawyers, educators, economists and businesspeople, as well as scholars of sociology, philosophy, applied ethics and policy, are incorporating the concepts and methods of neuroscience into their work. Indeed, for any field in which it is important to understand, predict or influence human behavior, neuroscience will play an increasing role. The Penn Neuroscience Boot Camp is designed to give participants a basic foundation in cognitive and affective neuroscience and to equip them to be informed consumers of neuroscience research.

What will happen at the Boot Camp?

Through a combination of lectures, break-out groups, panel discussions and laboratory visits, participants will gain an understanding of the methods of neuroscience and key findings on the cognitive and social-emotional functions of the brain, lifespan development and disorders of brain function.

Attendees from this year's Boot Camp blogged about it and seemed quite pleased. Applications for next year are being accepted until February 1, 2010.

Not guilty! I'm only a neuro-person and my brain made me do it

Not too long ago, I heard a presentation on the the brain and conflict resolution in which the speaker said dysfunctional brains are the cause of evil and crime. As regular readers know, I certainly do not agree with this reductionist view of human beings. So I was delighted to read a new paper by Professor Steven K, Erickson titled "Blaming the Brain." (Download here.) Excerpt:

People are more than their brains. Legal and social traditions have long held people accountable for their behavior under the presumption that most behavior is intentional and the product of conscious decision making. ...

Yet emerging conceptions of personhood generated by cognitive neuroscience suggests something very different than this entrenched view. Instead of people, cognitive neuroscience posits brains as the exclusive agents of behavior and suggests brains are incapable of blame because of their mechanical and determined nature. Minds and brains are held synonymous – thoughts, desires, and behaviors are regarded as no more than the yield of fixed neuronal tissue. ...

...

But there are problems with the neuro-person model. Despite the claim by neuroscientists that the mind is accessible, measurable, and predictable, there are good reasons for skepticism on all of these fronts. Cognitive neuroscience, like all fields of science, utilizes assumptions to generate its conclusions. Chief among these is that the complexity of the mind can be understood by examining localized areas of the brain which are presumed indicative of how people think.

Note: My recent post about locationism.

If you are interested in the mind and the brain, what makes people do what they do, and self-responsibility, I urge you to read the whole paper. Although Erickson is looking particularly at neurolaw within the criminal justice system, this paper is an excellent read for all of us.

Here are two posts from idealawg about neurolaw:

• Neurolaw another branch of neuromythology? Free will? Free won't?
• Neurolaw: Leaving out a big piece of the puzzle

Four upcoming programs: Will I see you at one or more?

The 16th Annual Northwest Dispute Resolution Conference begins tomorrow in Seattle. Here's the flyer [pdf].

May 5 and 6 brings the 9th annual SuperConference in Chicago, "the premier event for legal executives." More here.

On May 29, in Toronto, I will be giving a day-long program. Read all about it here.

Contemplative Practices for Lawyers Retreat will be held in Santa Fe, on September 12 and 13. More here.

I hope to meet some of you in Seattle, Chicago, Toronto, or Santa Fe!

The Brains on Purpose™ classes in Denver continue almost every month. We will be offering one in June, July, August, and October); contact me for details. And this summer I AM mastering the art and science of Webinars so watch for an announcement of those here—soon.

Interviews of speakers at the NeuroLeadership Summit

I have been adding links to these interviews as they occur. Listen to the 2008 North American NeuroLeadership Summit interviews here. The first interview is of Jeff.

Upcoming conference on neuroscience and meditation: Santa Fe in January

I am just back from the Southern California Mediation Association annual conference and was both intrigued and pleased by the large number of times I heard the words "meditation" and "mindfulness." So today I smiled when I received an announcement of the upcoming Zen Brain conference; it is the second annual event focusing on the brain and meditation put on by Upaya Institute. This year's conference is titled "ZEN BRAIN II: Open Presence, Selflessness, and Compassion: Perspectives from Buddhism, Neuroscience, and Complexity Theory."

Some of the presenters I have blogged about in the past: Sandra Blakeslee, James Austin, and Richard Davidson. All the presenters are introduced here.

An excerpt from the Upaya Web site:

In recent years, neuroscientific studies of Buddhist meditators who practice the cultivation of compassion and non-referential presence, and the application of mathematical complexity theory in biology and neuroscience, have provided interesting perspectives on the Buddhist concepts of emptiness, impermanence, codependent arising, selflessness, and nonduality. In this retreat/seminar, Zen teachers, leading scientists who have contributed to this growing field of research (and are each long-term meditation practitioners), a Buddhist scholar, a philosopher, and a neuroscience writer, interactively share their perspectives on the relationships between Zen practice, Buddhist philosophy, neuroscience, and complex systems theory. Talks and discussion examine how these areas of scientific research are relevant for practice, and how experienced meditation practitioners can help sharpen the research questions being asked.

This program is probably not for all of you but I wanted to make sure those with an interest learned about ZEN BRAIN II.

Note (added January 12, 2009, 3:15PM Mountain): Link to a summary of what occurred at the conference.

Access to many of the comments made by Jeffrey Schwartz and others at the UN's conference on the mind and the body

Denyse O'Leary is posting parts of the transcripts from the morning panel of last month's UN conference Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness. (My earlier post about Beyond the Mind-Body Problem.)

Here are the excerpts she has posted

• From Jeff Schwartz's comments
• From Esther Sternberg's comments
• From Henry Stapp's comments
• From Mario Beauregard's comments

I will add links here as she posts more excerpts. You may watch or listen to the whole of both the morning and afternoon panels here.