Tag: "neuroscience"

Brainwave entrainment: Rest for the gifted brain

Brainwave entrainment: Rest for the gifted brain

On her Gifted Universe site, Elisa provides a good summary of brainwave entrainment. Here is an excerpt:
How to shut or slow down the hamster wheel of a gifted mind? This is question I’ve been asked and have sometimes asked myself.
Truthfully, it’s only recently that I’ve become aware of the potential for my brain to ramp [...]

Allan Snyder on savant syndrome and creativity

Allan Snyder on savant syndrome and creativity

Darold Treffert, MD explains, “Savant Syndrome is a rare, but spectacular, condition in which persons with various developmental disabilities, including Autistic Disorder, have astonishing islands of ability or brilliance that stand in stark, markedly incongruous contrast to the over-all handicap.” From his article The Savant Syndrome: Islands of Genius.
Daniel Tammet , as one example, is [...]

Mystical Brain: Exploring our potential for physical & spiritual healing

Mystical Brain: Exploring our potential for physical & spiritual healing

The film Mystical Brain reveals the exploratory work of a team from the University of Montreal who seek to understand the states of grace experienced by mystics and those who meditate.
Filmmaker Isabelle Raynauld offers up scientific research, which proposes that mystical ecstasy is a transformative experience and could to contribute to people’s psychic and physical [...]

Healing anxiety – Dr. Mercola on “Dark Chocolate: The New Antianxiety Drug”

Chocolate could be more than just a welcome distraction, especially from holiday stress. It may have a calming effect on our anxiety.
An ounce and a half a day keeps the stress away
According to Dark Chocolate: The New Antianxiety Drug, by Dr. Mercola, “the use of chocolate as a cure for emotional stress has gotten new [...]

Can Tetris or other games enhance your brain?

From Your brain on Tetris, The Week magazine, Sep 25, 2009
Playing Tetris, the classic computer game, actually enlarges your brain, scientists say.
The game, which turns 25 this year, calls on players to rapidly fit together colored puzzle pieces as they fall from the top of the screen.
In a recent study, neuroscientists asked two dozen adolescents [...]

Nancy Andreasen on the importance of both arts and sciences for developing creativity

[From a Dana Press Blog:]

At the recent Learning and the Brain Conference in Washington D.C., Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D., Ph.D., discussed the importance of providing students with a “liberal education” that combines the study of the arts and the sciences.
She asked: How important are the arts for optimal development of the mind and brain? How [...]

Developing multiple talents: what about savant abilities?

An autistic savant, Daniel Tammet can recite more than 22,000 digits of pi from memory. He believes such astounding abilities are based on an associative form of thinking and imagination, not due to some cerebral or genetic fluke.
He thinks differences between savant and non-savant minds have been exaggerated, to the detriment of how most of [...]

Developing creativity and letting in more stimuli

A new Eide Neurolearning Blog post refers to studies on attentional style and creativity, including a study that notes, “…psychometric measures of creativity and measures of real-world creative achievement are associated with a habitual tendency toward diffuse rather than focused attention, which results in ineffective filtering of distracting or irrelevant environmental stimuli.”
From the Highly Sensitive [...]

Mind enhancement devices and drugs for personal growth

From soft winds to software
A flickering candle, the sound of surf, beating drums, psychotropic plants – those can all be seen as early “devices” for altering mental states and consciousness. Now, there is a wide range of much more sophisticated devices, software and smart drugs designed to enhance awareness and cognitive abilities, which may or [...]

Bill Harris on consciousness technology & holosync

The image is from the book Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge, by B. Alan Wallace, founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. The book notes “There are certainly kinds of neuronal activity that causally contribute to the emergence of specific states of consciousness and mental activity.”
Bill Harris, Director of [...]