Science of the SpiritS


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Most creative and innovative teams have prior shared experiences but diverse knowledge and skills


Science Daily
Thu, 28 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
creativity, innovation
What spurs creativity? A Columbia sociologist studied the teams behind 12,422 video games released worldwide from 1979, when the gaming industry started, to 2009, and found the most innovative teams were built around diverse experiences and knowledge. David Stark, the Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology, found that the most effective teams were comprised of people who had experience working together but different knowledge and skills. His findings, which can be applied to many types of teams -- businesspeople, scientists, economists, musicians, engineers and more -- show that prior social interactions enable groups to avoid intractable conflict while diverse expertise helps them avoid the pitfalls of "groupthink."

In other words, the cognitive distance of diversity creates a friction -- a productive friction in teams in which some members of the group had previously worked together. "It is this uneasy fit, a lack of harmony, which is innovative," said Stark. "It is a mobilization of productive tension to create something exceptional. Misunderstandings and breakdowns in communication can be as important as a smooth exchange of ideas."

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Hourglass

Regrets of the older and wiser: Time wasted on things that don't matter in the long run

Kristin Wong
Lifehacker
Thu, 28 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
time, wasted time
We spend a lot of energy looking for shortcuts to save time, and sure, those shortcuts add up. But when I look back, my biggest time regrets aren't spending too much time on Twitter or mismanaging my daily tasks. Those are bad habits, but there are bigger, more systematic time wasters that have really gotten in the way. Fixing these will free up a massive amount of time and energy.

Not Asking for Help

My first week on my first job out of college, my boss handed me a huge spreadsheet. He told me to organize it in a way that made zero sense to me. Being a quiet, timid person, I simply nodded, walked back to my desk, and stared at that spreadsheet for like an hour, hoping to make some sense of it (yep, just like George Costanza and the Penske file).

Finally, my coworker came in, and I confessed I had no idea what to do. He broke it down for me, then dropped some advice that's stuck with me ever since: "You might feel dumb asking questions, but you look dumber when you don't get it because you failed to ask."

It was harsh, but true. And not only did I look like an ass, I could've also saved a fair amount of time that day by simply asking my boss what he meant. It made me wonder how much time I'd wasted by not asking for help over the years. As dumb as you might feel asking questions, it's the fastest way to get an answer.

Comment: Top five regrets of the dying

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Bulb

Creative minds are wired differently than the rest of us

Carolyn Gregoire & Scott Barry Kaufman
Quartz
Sun, 31 Jan 2016 02:54 UTC
creativity, science, brain,
© Reuters/Michaela RehleIt feels different, too.
What makes highly creative people different from the rest of us? In the 1960s, psychologist and creativity researcher Frank X. Barron set about finding out. Barron conducted a series of experiments on some of his generation's most renowned thinkers in an attempt to isolate the unique spark of creative genius.

In a historic study, Barron invited a group of high-profile creators—including writers Truman Capote, William Carlos Williams, and Frank O'Connor, along with leading architects, scientists, entrepreneurs, and mathematicians—to spend several days living in a former frat house on the University of California at Berkeley campus. The participants spent time getting to know one another, being observed by researchers, and completing evaluations of their lives, work, and personalities, including tests that aimed to look for signs of mental illness and indicators of creative thinking.

Barron found that, contrary to conventional thought at the time, intelligence had only a modest role in creative thinking. IQ alone could not explain the creative spark.

The creative genius is "occasionally crazier and yet adamantly saner than the average person." Instead, the study showed that creativity is informed by a whole host of intellectual, emotional, motivational and moral characteristics. The common traits that people across all creative fields seemed to have in common were an openness to one's inner life; a preference for complexity and ambiguity; an unusually high tolerance for disorder and disarray; the ability to extract order from chaos; independence; unconventionality; and a willingness to take risks.

Describing this hodgepodge of traits, Barron wrote that the creative genius was "both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, occasionally crazier and yet adamantly saner, than the average person."
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Bulb

Chess can help children manage information, despite ruling by Saudi grand mufti

Stephen McKinney
The Conversation
Mon, 25 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
chess
The future of chess in Saudi Arabia is in doubt after the country's most senior cleric, the grand mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz al-Sheikh, said it was forbidden under Islam. Al-Sheikh told a television interviewer that chess is "included under gambling" and a "waste of time and money and a cause for hatred and enmity between players".

The Saudi Chess Association has since appeared to question this view, admitting the grand mufti's charge but noting that "all sports can fall into being religiously illegal once they involve gambling, directing players away from religious practice ... (or) creating hatred between players". While we wait to see how this plays out, there are several points worth making.

First, there is of course no necessary connection between chess and gambling. Chess is valued as a game and an enjoyable way to spend time in many parts of the world. There are competing claims for its roots in India, China and Persia; but the game is usually agreed to be at least 1,300 years old and the modern version can be traced back to 15th-century southern Europe. Chess is recognised by the International Olympic Committee as a sport - not to mention the Saudi Olympic Committee, as the country's chess association also points out. There is a campaign to have it included in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. A decision is due in August.

Far from being a waste of time, chess can be of great benefit to children's minds. Several academics have looked into this extensively. Chess has been persuasively linked with improving children's concentration, problem-solving, critical, original and creative thinking - and even mathematical abilities. It is also said to help with memory storage and how young brains manage information - and should not only be perceived as a game for gifted children. Children with special educational needs can improve their abilities to learn and interact with other children if they become involved in school chess programmes and chess clubs.
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People 2

Intrusive thoughts? Try focusing on your breath

Rachel Nuwer
Brain Decoder
Thu, 28 Jan 2016 00:19 UTC
polar bear intrusion
© BD, Shutterstock
Our minds are not entirely under our control. Fyodor Dostoevsky noted as much in 1863, when he penned his famous white bear observation. "Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute."

Over a century later, social psychologist Daniel Wegner scientifically verified Dostoevsky's claim. Volunteers asked to suppress thoughts of a white bear utterly failed at that task. In a second step, Wegner asked the volunteers to actively think of the bear. He found that original thought suppression group was now able to spend significantly more time picturing the animal than subjects who were asked to think about it from the beginning. Thought suppression, Wegner hypothesized, seems to produce "the very obsession or preoccupation that it is directed against."

While bears on the brain may be a somewhat innocuous preoccupation, Wegner noted that the same backfiring effect often plays out when trying not to ruminate on painful or distressing topics. He explained this phenomenon through the lens of "ironic processes": when trying to suppress a thought, our mind repeatedly checks back in on the thought to make sure we are indeed suppressing it, thus making us think of it more.

Comment: Soothe your mind, body and spirit with the breath focused meditation of the Eiriu Eolas program.

Éiriú Eolas - Irish Gaelic for "Growth of Knowledge"

Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program is the modern revival of an ancient breathing and meditation program which is being acclaimed around the world as THE TOOL that will help you to:
  • Relax from the stresses of everyday life
  • Gently work your way through past emotional and psychological trauma
  • Release repressed emotions and mental blockages
  • Rejuvenate and Detoxify your body and mind
Éiriú Eolas removes the barriers that stand between you and True Peace, Happiness, and ultimately a successful, fulfilling life.

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Bulb

Want to quickly learn a new skill? Make slight changes in each repeat practice session


Johns Hopkins Medicine
Thu, 28 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
learning, practicing skills, music
When practicing and learning a new skill, making slight changes during repeat practice sessions may help people master the skill faster than practicing the task in precisely the same way, Johns Hopkins researchers report.

In a study of 86 healthy volunteers asked to learn a computer-based motor skill, those who quickly adjusted to a modified practice session the second time around performed better than when repeating their original task, the researchers found. The results support the idea that a process called reconsolidation, in which existing memories are recalled and modified with new knowledge, plays a key role in the strengthening of motor skills, says senior study author Pablo A. Celnik, M.D., professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"What we found is if you practice a slightly modified version of a task you want to master, you actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple times in a row," says Celnik. The work, described in the Jan. 28 edition of the journal Current Biology, has implications not only for leisure skills, like learning to play a musical instrument or a sport, but also for helping patients with stroke and other neurological conditions regain lost motor function, he says.

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Info

Researchers can read minds at nearly the speed of thought

George Dvorsky
Gizmodo
Fri, 29 Jan 2016 12:16 UTC
Mind Reading
© Kai Miller and Brian Donohue
An experiment by University of Washington researchers is setting the stage for advances in mind reading technology. Using brain implants and sophisticated software, researchers can now predict what their subjects are seeing with startling speed and accuracy.

The ability to view a two-dimensional image on a page or computer screen, and then transform that image into something our minds can immediately recognize, is a neurological process that remains mysterious to scientists.

To learn more about how our brains perform this task—and to see if computers can collect and predict what a person is seeing in real time—a research team led by University of Washington neuroscientist Rajesh Rao and neurosurgeon Jeff Ojermann demonstrated that it's possible to decode human brain signals at nearly the speed of perception.

The details of their work can be found in a new paper in PLOS Computational Biology.

The team sought the assistance of seven patients undergoing treatment for epilepsy. Medications weren't helping alleviate their seizures, so these patients were given temporary brain implants, and electrodes were used to pinpoint the focal points of their seizures. The UW researchers saw this as an opportunity to perform their experiment. "They were going to get the electrodes no matter what," noted Ojermann in a UW NewsBeat article. "We were just giving them additional tasks to do during their hospital stay while they are otherwise just waiting around."

The patients were shown a random sequence of pictures—images of human faces, houses, and blank gray screens—on computer monitors in brief 400 millisecond intervals. Their specific task was to watch for an image of an upside-down house.
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Magic Wand

Overcome depression using your mind

Stephan Gardner
Collective Evolution
Wed, 27 Jan 2016 18:41 UTC
depression
© sensum.deviantart.com
There are a lot of theories about the cause of depression in existence today, the primary one being biochemical imbalances in the brain, at least according to mainstream medicine. However, mainstream medicine hasn't proven whether these imbalances are the true cause or simply an effect of being depressed. What we do know is that depression appears to result in changes in the brain structure and chemistry; however, these changes are also known to be related to lifestyle, emotions, trauma, activities you do (or don't do), and in general, how fulfilled you are in your life.

What science shows us is that your brain is constantly rewiring itself in response to how you perceive your environment. It's an adaptive function to ensure the brain is effective at performing the task it's most asked to perform. A tennis player's brain will look completely different from the brain of a musician. The depressed person's brain will look much different from that of someone who isn't depressed. So is depression just a malfunction of evolution, or is it possible it's an adaptation to a series of persistent thought processes and actions? And if that is true, isn't it possible that if we change those thought processes and actions, we could then rewire the brain, restore chemical balance, and change the effect of depression?

Comment: Epidemic depression as a wake up call to humanity
The depression that I'm interested in is the kind that drags on and on, the kind that costs the victim much couch time at the therapist's office and puts them on a medical treadmill, often for life. The kind of depression I'm talking about is the type that drives people to suicide, often multiple times over long periods of their lives. It sucks the soul out of you because it convinces you that the world is a completely nihilistic place. There is no purpose, no hope, no future, and no one understands. There is only a cold unfeeling world whose culture is at best superficial, and at worst outright psychopathic. There is a nothingness inside of you that grows and grows and grows.

How and why do relatively well-adjusted people with normal lives come to carry this monster inside of them, this feeling of a shattered soul that refuses to be cured with drugs or the latest counseling theories? I think the answer to that question is that the being of such people has, at some level of awareness, been forced to realize that the world "out there" is not right in some fundamental way; that it has in fact become a playground for nihilistic personalities who have no plan whatsoever other than to gorge on their own thirst for darkness and destruction.


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Life Preserver

How to regain energy when life is bleeding you dry


Bakadesuyo
Thu, 28 Jan 2016 23:03 UTC
energy
© Unknown
We'd all like to know how to get more energy when life throws curve balls at us.

These ideas from psychology research can help you keep going and overcome a terminal case of I-don't-feel-like-it.

Let's get started...

Comment: Also see:
Given the highly toxic state most people find themselves in, the rapidly changing environment which we live in, and the incredible ability that iodine has to strengthen people's health and improve their lives, I decided to write the following summary about iodine supplementation as an introduction to the subject. The information presented here is based on preliminary research available on this forum discussion thread on iodine and on the books Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It (5th Edition) by Dr. Brownstein, andThe Iodine Crisis by Lynne Farrow.

Iodine is an essential micro-nutrient. This means every single cell of every single person needs it. Evolutionary biologists reckon that seafood consumption, and thus iodine absorption, played an important role in human brain development and evolution. Iodine also has excellent antibacterial, anticancer, antiparasitic, antifungal, and antiviral properties.

Iodine - Suppressed knowledge that can change your life


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Stop

A thought-provoking experiment: What happens when children don't have the internet for a whole day?


brightside.me
Thu, 28 Jan 2016 19:22 UTC
kids tech
© imagemax.com
Child psychologist Yekaterina Murashova describes an unusual experiment in her book showing what happened when a group of teenagers were deprived of access to the internet and modern technology for a single day. We think it's well worth checking out — you can consider the implications for yourself.

Children and teenagers aged between 12 and 18 years voluntarily spent eight hours alone without access to any means of communication (mobile phones; the internet, etc.). They were also forbidden to turn on the computer, any other electronic gadgets, the radio and the TV. But they were allowed to engage in a number of 'classic' activities by themselves: writing, reading, playing musical instruments, painting, needlework, singing, walking, and so on.

Comment: Read more about What screen addiction is doing to your children
So what are innovations like computers, the internet, and cell phones, among others, doing to our children? Well, they could be doing a lot more than we think, and little of it good. There is a widespread consensus in the scientific community that the radiation alone from these devices can be very debilitating to our health in the long term. We are approaching a time where we will potentially begin to see these effects surface, given the fact that the first cell phone/computer/internet/video games generation is approaching the age of thirty...

As we continue to move forward, this type of addiction and behaviour becomes more disturbing. The power that some multinational corporations have, alongside their clever marketing tactics - basically making whatever product or idea they choose to be desirable to the human mind - is worrisome. A few years ago, the American Academy of Paediatrics found that the average 8-10 year old spends almost eight hours a day with a variety of different media, and older children/teenagers spend even more, upwards of up to 11 hours. (source)


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