Since it’s Mother’s Day here in the States, I thought I’d take a moment to ponder Mom’s effect on the mind. 

Much of our brain’s wiring is inherited, and half of that inheritance, of course, comes from dear old Mom.    Prenatal nutrition plays a long lasting part in neurological development, too - alcohol, drugs, toxic exposure, vitamins.  Then there’s the way mom feeds a growing child, how the young brain is stimulated, and what mom teaches us about how to think, how she models things for us, social interactions, the impact of  stress, neglect, or child abuse, all of these things affect us not only as children but throughout life.

My mother did a lot right, brainwise, with my brother and I.  I  have memories from when we were as young as six months - an oddity I attribute to the flash cards she started using with us at about that age.     She stressed reading, science, art, flexible viewpoints, and all kinds of creative thinking - building neural pathways that are still incredibly useful.

But my brain doesn’t always work quite right, as though it isn’t firing on all cylinders - and she’s always had much the same issue.   Sometimes she just can’t think straight, gets overwhelmed and easily confused, and whatever causes this mental madness glitch, I inherited it.    (I like to think it’s endearing - leave me my illusions please) My brother was manic-depressive, but that seems to have come from the paternal line; my particular madness is more subtle.

So thanks, Mom. 

For teaching me to think, and, yes,  even for the  sometimes cute-but-confused brain malfunctions ;)  

How did your mom affect your brain wiring most, through inheritance or environment?  Did you do anything special, mind-wise, when raising your own kids, or have any great suggestions for other parents?  Maybe together we’ll will inspire the next generation of Mind-Wise Mom’s!

Continuing the shameless twisting of John Medina’s Brain Rules for my own nefarious purposes,  I proudly present:

Brain Rule #4:  We don’t pay attention to boring things (so don’t be a boring blogger)

Getting a reader’s attention is crucial for a blogger - keeping it is even more important.   But with a gazillion bits of competing information whirling around in their heads,  what makes a reader stay focused on YOUR blog post instead of the 3 dozen others cued up in their feed-reader?   Learn to apply the basics of the brain’s attention span, and make your blog "sticky".

  In Ten Minutes or Less

The average human brain has about a 10 minute attention span.   Even in the best conditions, with few distractions and a desire to focus - attention falters every 9.5 minutes.    To keep someone’s attention beyond that, they need to be actively engaged, re-hooked, so to speak.

[click to continue…]

Thought this might interest some of you…

From ABC News:

What would you do if you couldn’t forget anything in your life? For most of us, our memories fade as we age, and only the occasional song, smell or photo will take us back to a particular time and place.

Jill Price can recall almost every detail of her past.

But for the woman formerly known to the world as simply "A.J.," her memory is so powerful that it dominates her life. She sat down with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer recently to reveal herself publicly in the hopes that others with unusual memories like hers will come forward and be studied.

In her first television interview, 42-year-old Jill Price told Sawyer, "I am in the moment, but I also have, like this split screen in my head. I always explain it to people like I’m walking around with a video camera on my shoulder. And every day is a videotape. So if you throw a date out at me, it’s as if I pulled a videotape out, put in a VCR and just watched the day. As it happened. From my point of view.

"I walk around with my life right next to me," she said.

Watch more of Diane Sawyer’s interview with Jill Price tonight on "20/20" at 10 p.m. ET.

We still understand so little about how memory is formed, stored and recalled  -  there should be some interesting clues in this woman’s experience.

MindTweak: "Happiness is good health, and
a bad memory."      - Ingrid Bergman

When the brain fitness gurus over at PositScience offered me a chance to review their latest offering, Cortex, with InSight, I happily accepted. After all, I’ve been wanting to peer under the hood of their software for quite some time. The package arrived on Friday, and after a bit of a delay ( due to blog design issues and the descent of Danish relatives) I finally popped it into the DVD drive and got the old neurons fired up.

The original PositScience program focuses on training with sound (which makes sense, given founder Dr. Michael Merzenich’s previous work with cochlear implants). In contrast, InSight is targeted towards the visual side of things. Several of the exercises work with the “Useful Field of View” training technology, which don’t really understand just yet, but I promise to find out more about it

Installation went smoothly; it should pose no problem even for those with little computer experience. The program comes with a printed, illustrated installation guide, each step laid out in easy to read fonts. Even the registration code is printed in a decent sized font, something even my nearsighted self appreciates. (I do get tired of trying to make out at serial numbers in size 4 fonts. ) [click to continue…]

I was just finishing up the other brain-training program’s mini-review, and was stumbling around for this week’s tweak, when who should discover Twitter? My *other* set of brain training software gurus, Lumosity! And one of the first things they tweeted? They’ve just released this nifty little brain warm up widget. Enjoy!

_________________________________________
MindTweak: “You cannot travel on the path
until you become the path itself.” - Buddha
______________________________________

Inspired by John Medina’s 12 Brain Rules, I’ve taken it upon myself to shamelessly steal borrow and adapt all 12 rules to the unique-and-special-snowflake needs of bloggers. Want to build a better blog? Start by building a better brain!

Brain Rule #1: Exercise Boosts Brain Power
(even in bloggers!)

Your brain needs exercise. No, not just the mental sort you get from researching for hours on end, practicing creative writing techniques, or mucking around with CSS code, I’m talking about real life old-fashioned get-your-heart-moving physical workouts. Getting the blood pumping increases the amount of oxygen and glucose available to the brain, making it work better *now*. Not only that, but 30 minutes of aerobic exercise just 2 times a week can cut your risk of dementia in half. (We won’t mention the added benefit of reducing blogger-butt-bloat) [click to continue…]

That’s right… MindTweaks is now sporting the latest in fashionable blog themes, a Deaux-tweaked version of Thesis, from Chris Pearson. You may know Chris as the designer of Copyblogger’s Wordpress theme, among others. He’s got a lot of lovely free themes available - just scroll down the page a bit.

Once upon a time, I swore I’d never pay for a Wordpress theme, there’s so many lovely free ones out there. But Thesis has some sweet features I couldn’t have created on my own, like the gorgeous completely resizable typography. (Go on, adjust the font size in your browser, I dare you!)

But like any upgrade, there are a few issues I still need to take care of, so things may look a bit funky while I finish the updates to sidebars, some of the post content, and so on.

Please let me know what you think? See any breakage or oddness in your browser? It’s nearly impossible to debug alone these days!

___________________________________________

MindTweak: “Only great minds can afford a simple style.” ~ Stendhal

When most people discover a book that really connects for them, they can’t put it down. Me? I can’t keep it picked up!

Contrary, I know. But sometimes an author’s words hit all the right buttons, and my mental machinery gets all wound up and excited. It starts kicking out so many of its own ideas that I’m compelled to put the book down, pick up a pen and notepad, and scribble madly.

Brain Rules is one of those books. It sparked so many thoughts that I had trouble focusing on the book itself. My attempts to focus on a proper review have been even trickier. [click to continue…]

Without (much) further ado…
*Trumpet Flourish*

Tweak Me Now

(Pop up blockers off, please…
and you need to have the Flash player installed.)

And a big thanks to my friends at GhostDog(alpha)
for hosting this on their Dogpark!

The BackStory: [click to continue…]

Don’t try to deny it, I know you’ve had them - everyone does - those embarrassing instants of mind-numbing stupidity. You’re faced with a task, question or action that you’ve done a thousand times, and yet, you flub it. Even worse, you may even recognize the problem *as you make it*, you may know that you’re about to screw up colossally, and yet, you’re unable to stop it. Brain fart. <cue obnoxious sound file>

Turns out, it’s more than just a cutesy way of explaining away our embarrassment over mental glitches. Brain farts are real. No, the brain doesn’t actually belch noxious fumes, but still — they are real, measurable events in the brain, and even more interesting, they’re predictable. Here’s the deal:

Researchers were looking in the brain for cues that a mistake was being made - hoping to spot some sort of activity blip that signaled an error, perhaps an instantaneous loss of concentration.

[click to continue…]