I just spent several days talking with scientists and lecturing in Australia. The summer months (our winter months) are a wonderful time to travel Down Under. The cities are lively, the sun is out, and people are in cheerful mood—which is amplified just a little more in Australia than I most places in the world.…
I just returned from a week spent talking with therapists and educational specialists in Seoul, South Korea. As in visits to many places in the world, it is exciting to see the enthusiasm that therapists have for applying our brain training tools to help children and adults who struggle—even while they have not really been…
In the January 19th issue of JAMA-Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, a research team from Washington University (St. Louis) School of Medicine reported interesting outcomes from a brain training strategy that appeared to help a significant proportion of individuals living with severe tinnitus.1 The nature of these benefits—and other outcomes from this carefully conducted trial—are provocative…
Scientists usually avoid extending their arguments into politics. Politics is all about persuasion and belief. Science is all about evidence-informed conclusion. In science, we continuously measure the strength of the evidence supporting initially-tentative hypotheses. Evidence often gradually accumulates in support of a great general conclusion or theory. On this basis, one can now state, with…
You probably know that I strongly recommend that you spend 10-30 (or more) minutes every day at the brain gym (www.brainhq.com). For me, that’s 30 minutes spent on my laptop working on my BrainHQ Personal Trainer regimen when I first arrive in the morning at my office—but it could be almost anytime in my daily…
As an alumnus, I recently read an article published in the Johns Hopkins Magazine written about a part-time faculty member in their distinguished Bloomberg School or Public health, Gerald Eber. Eber is also an ACLU lawyer whose primary concern has been the health care of Americans in prison. The medical treatment of prisoners, in Eber’s…
A few days ago, a young linebacker on the San Francisco 49ers, clearly destined to be a star player in the National Football League, hung up his cleats. Chris Borland, a highly honored University of Wisconsin player who had had a wonderful rookie NFL season, decided that the risks for his brain health were just…
I met yesterday with a former doctoral student, now a professor at the University of Texas in Dallas, Michael Kilgard. As a research fellow in my UCSF laboratory, Dr. Kilgard studied the conditions under which acetycholine enables brain plasticity—showing among other findings that large scale and highly useful plasticity can be achieved by pairing sensory…
One of the negative consequences of our high tech- and fear-dominated modern culture is the systematic withdrawal of children from independent and exploratory play, in natural social and physical environments. Our fear culture frustrates outside, unfettered exploration for the developing child. Parents can be arrested for leaving their children to play on their own, in…