Despite the benefits of our screens, why don’t they improve overall happiness? You might have read my blog on the topic of why our screens don’t make us happier from several weeks ago. I followed that up with this video on my Tech Happy Life YouTube channel. This should be the last video in which I’m covering…
If you are old enough, you might remember the old public service commercial about a frying egg representing “your brain on drugs.” I doubt that people actually avoided drugs based upon that commercial, but it did get our attention! What about your brain on smartphones? Admittedly, that’s a drastic comparison, but they do share…
Why do smartphones and other technologies have such a pull on us? We all feel it nowadays. We clutch our smartphones as if they were a treasure we can’t lose. If you have watched The Lord of the Rings, our smartphones have a curious power over us, much like the One Ring. We can’t…
Is football causing CTE? The full name of CTE is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is a degenerative brain condition that is found in athletes, military combat veterans, and other individuals who have received repeated blows or trauma to the head. Through a process that is still being explored, repeated blows to the head, such…
As I get older, I find myself more drawn to the idea that we can train our brains to make us smarter. Although the idea might be seductive, a year ago I blogged in detail about brain training and said that the evidence doesn’t show that it improves our overall cognitive functioning. Has new research been conducted since…
This could be a really short blog. As for the answer to the question of “Do we only use 10 percent of our brains?” : No! Now here’s the longer answer. 🙂 This myth bothers me because it been proven wrong long ago but is still commonly passed around. It has my hackles up because I heard the…
In my previous blog, I covered the controversial topic of brain training and whether it really makes us smarter. A brief addition to that blog is whether these games and techniques can actually be harmful. Here are some of my thoughts on this issue: In general, I don’t think brain training games are…
We’ve all seen and heard the ads – brain training games will make you smarter! Partly fueled by the engagement, variety, and dynamic interaction that video games offer, various brain training games (e.g., Lumosity, NeuroActive, Big Brain Academy, Brain Age) and other software (e.g., CogMed) promise to (or suggest might) improve specific cognitive abilities such as…
In my previous blog, I discussed how/why mindfulness is the “master” key to change. Mindfulness is being in the present moment nonjudgmentally. Mindfulness is a tool that can help us to focus our attention better. Improving any aspect of our behavior – being kinder, listening to others, modifying our forehand in tennis, remembering where…
I recently watched an inspirational TED (Technology, Entertainment, & Design) Talk by Harvard social psychologist Dr. Amy Cuddy. It’s definitely worth watching (so I’ve embedded the video at the bottom of this post), but I’ll summarize some of the main points here because these are things from which we can all benefit. We’ve all…