As usual, another podcast, another book being flogged. But that’s alright since this authors chosen are usually pretty interesting. This is the case in the interview with Dr. Gary Small who is doing research on people’s brain using FMRI.
I’m not sure why I’m picking up stuff about how the brain works recently, but here are my notes from this one.
- When we are confronted with a new task, we don’t know how to do something so our brains try different techniques to do it. After you have done it your brain activity will be more uniform. And after proficiency is achieved, your brain will reduce activity which would imply efficiency.
- Synapse Pruning – Early during the development neurons make many synapses, later the number declines, reaching the level of adulthood. The process is called activity dependent synapse elimination, when active synapses are reinforced and inactive ones are eliminated. Number of synapses can change even in the adult animals, making conditions for synaptic plasticity. – Citizendium
- In teenagers, complex reasoning, planning and empathy portions of the brain (frontal lobe) are undeveloped
- milenisation – neurons fire faster; happens in older brains (Google completely failed this search)
- The cost of technology? A lack of people interaction skills; conversation, non-verbal communication, etc.
- Dr. Small did a presentation at Google
- Continuous Partial Attention
- Stress releases cortisol, cortisol shrinks the hippocampus, which lead to temporary short-term memory loss — which is why you make your testing checklists ahead of time
- Taking breaks helps your brain work better. Better away from computer but if need be make the activity different than that you are breaking from.
- Surgeons who play video games make less errors