THE SCIENCE OF CHANGE, 3.09

Another TV show, another lie?

The Fox television show “Lie To Me” features an investigation team whose members can tell when people are lying based on unconscious facial movements. It is a skill often associated with poker players. While the show’s situations are a bit of a leap, the basic science is fairly sound. Nine of the 12 facial muscle groups are connected directly to your Reptilian Brain, meaning they respond without you having to think about them. Through relaxation and conscious thought, you can, however, gain some control over these facial “tells.”

Your electric brain

In RapidChange Fundamentals training we talk about how your brain holds about 40 volts of potential chemical electricity. According to the traveling museum show BODIES (you may have heard of how they use real human cadavers that have been placticized), that electricity travels at 270 mph in your head and can light a 10 watt light bulb.

Babies make us human

In the view of Harvard primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the extraordinary social skills of an infant are at the heart of what makes us human.Through its ability to solicit and secure the attentive care not just of its mother but of many others in its sensory purview, a baby promotes many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one’s guard, uncurl one’s lip and widen one’s pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me, myself and mine. Click here to read the whole story.

RETURN TO RAPID REPORT

THE SCIENCE OF CHANGE, 1.09

Can scientists read your mind?

The implications are scary. Neuroscientists at Carnegie Mellon University used a computer and a functional MRI to "read" the mind of a CBS producer.

Just what this somewhat awkward and very, very basic technology can be used for is somewhat cloudy. You can probably brainstorm some potential uses.

Go here to get a peek at the future on 60 minutes.

Happiness really is contagious

The Mainstream Media reported last month about a Harvard study suggesting that happiness can spread like a virus ... kind of. Here are the findings: The increase in the chance that you will be happy if the following people are happy:
Next-door neighbor:      34 percent
Nearby friend:               25 percent
Nearby sibling:              14 percent
Spouse:                         8 percent

Based on information collected as part of the Framingham Heart Study, a long-running project that looked at 4,739 adults between 1983 and 2003.

How fast we're moving; how far we're going

Scientist Ray Kurzweil proposes that during the first 10 years of the 21st Century (by 2010), humans will have created more technological advancement than in all history combined … 4 million years vs. 10 years.

Meanwhile, Watts Wacker, a friend of RapidChange and one of the world’s most trusted business futurist, is looking seriously at biomechtronics. It is an inter-disciplinary study of biology, mechanics and electrons. It looks at the interactivity between biological origins and electromechanical devices. The primitive applications have included both the defibrillator and the pacemaker. Soon we’ll see similar devices for diabetics/pancreas, electronically controlled muscle stimulators for stroke patients and accident survivors and, are you ready ... cameras wired to the brain so blind people can see again. Wow!!  Learn more at www.firstmatter.com

Return to Rapid Report

THE SCIENCE OF CHANGE, 11.08

Hogging the discussion

MIT Professor Dr. Alex Pentland has developed a cellphone-like gadget to listen to people as they chat. Computer programs sift through these conversational cadences, studying communication signals that lie beneath the words. This reality mining allows the software to tell the speakers whether they tend to interrupt others, for example, or whether they dominate meetings with monologues, or appear inattentive when others are talking. They already have prototype badges and phones being used in the market.

All that surfing may be good for you

Time spent on the internet may help stimulate and improve the minds of middle-aged and older Americans, UCLA scientists suggest. The research included 24 healthy volunteers, 55-76. Half had internet experience. The others had none. All were asked to perform Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. While reading stimulated the brain, using the internet registered extensive activity in decision-making and complex-reasoning portions of the brain.

THE SCIENCE OF CHANGE, 10.08

The Bottom Line Power of Imaging

•    Emory University’s Gregory Berns, in his new book Iconoclast (Harvard Business Press) uncovers through science and example how business leaders have used the power of imaging to create new business opportunities.
•    Among his findings is that Perception and Imagination are linked in the brain because they use the same neural circuits. As a result, the harder you try to think differently, the more rigid your thinking becomes. In order to think creatively, you must develop new neural pathways that “jolt” your experience-dependent perceptions. In other words, you have to do something different and probably slightly uncomfortable.
•    Only when the brain is forced to wrestle with the unfamiliar will it begin to realign those neural circuits.

Multi-tasking, really?

•    Cell phone in one ear, iPod bud in the other, computer screen flashing, co-worker talking to you, fresh report from finance in one hand, lunch in the other. Now we’re working!
•    As the tragic train crash in Los Angeles suggests, the dangers of multi-tasking are very real. Initial reports indicate one of the train engineers was texting while driving.
•    We continue to believe we are more productive, despite research that shows over and over that carrying on several tasks at once reduces productivity.  In fact, the more complicated one of the tasks, the more time it takes for the brain to switch gears.
•    Our brains are wired to perform linearly according the research by the University of Michigan and, interestingly enough, the FAA, the government agency responsible for air traffic control.
•    Even more interesting is research from the UofM that shows people who multi-task retain much less information just three hours after learning it.
•    However, there is some evidence that the rising generation – those now under 24, have significantly different wiring when it comes to multi-tasking. But the research is far from conclusive.

Our Inner Spam Filter

•    Research by Edward Vogel from the University of Oregon
•    We’ve often thought of our ability to remember as a function of volume. You’ve heard people say their hard disk is full? Vogel’s research suggests it isn’t a question of the size of our storage but our ability to filter relevant and irrelevant information.
•    People with a high capacity to remember have a good “spam” filter, while those with a low capacity have a harder time sifting through all the input.
•    This filter appears to be in the Reptilian Brain and connects to the pre-frontal lobe. The question is to what degree we are born with a specific kind of filter and how much we can refine and improve the operation of that filter. 


Back to Rapid Report