Are You a Right-Brained or Left-Brained Designer?

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via designshack.net

Colors, pictures, creativity; designers are quite obviously a group of people that tend to gravitate towards using the right sides of their brains… right? Or is this simply a stereotype that doesn’t necessarily ring true?

Is design exclusively artistic talent put to productive use or is it possible that the industry is equally full of analytical problem solvers? Let’s take a look at how designers think, whether you’re a right brainer or a left brainer, and how I’ve struggled through being a left brainer in an industry of right brainers.

Researchers Are Trying to Hack Your Brain

via gizmodo.com

The thought of someone being able to read your mind is frightening. And according to some new research presented at the 21st USENIX Security Symposium, brain hacking might be more realistic than we would assume.

The research has nothing to do with psychics or supernatural stuff, but rather focuses its gaze on inexpensive products that you can buy now—like Emotiv’s EPOC headset. Using a headset that lets you control your computer with your brainwaves, a hacker could hypothetically create a sort of “brain spyware” app that would trick you into revealing personal information.

What Information Overload Does To Your Brain

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via businessinsider.com

Hedge fund manager James Altucher recently wrote about how multitasking can kill you. Neuroscience shows that our brains simply weren’t created for it. Yet many people continue to live hyper-connected lives, essentially creating 24/7 workweeks — no matter how unhealthy it is.

This excellent infographic by OnlineUniversities.com shows how acutely information overload affects productivity:

Left Brain Vs. Right Brain Shoppers

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via techi.com

The term “Left Brain vs. Right Brain” is something you may have heard during a psychology course in college or something you could see if taking an online personality test. The term is often used to describe which side of the brain people use the most when making everyday decisions. Left brain customers are very different than those who use the right brain and vice versa, which ultimately affects how businesses market their products.

The graphic below helps explain what the differences are between the right and left brain consumers and can also help in understanding which kind of shopper your business is advertising to the most.

Scientists Create System That Lets You Type With Your Brain

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via gizmodo.com

Researchers have invented a mind-reading system that, for the first time in history, allows any person to type words and phrases letter by letter, just by thinking. It all occurs in real time, without moving a single muscle or uttering a single word.

This is an amazing invention. Not only it will help anyone with serious motor disabilities, but it could potentially affect all of us in an amazing way.

According to the researchers—Bettina Sorger, Joel Reithler, Brigitte Dahmen, Rainer Goebel at Universiteit Maastricht’s Faculty of Psychology & Neuroscience Department of Neurocognition—this is the first system that translates thoughts into letters in real time, allowing “back-and-forth communication within a single scanning session.”

Futurist Ray Kurzweil: Computers to Outsmart Humans by 2029

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via inc.com

Futurist and tech inventor Ray Kurzweil told an audience this week that by 2029, computers’ reasoning will be on par with that of humans, the Wall Street Journal reports. Kurzweil made the declaration in an onstage interview at the Journal’s CFO Network annual conference in Washington.

By 2029, Kurzweil predicts, computers will have the capacity to pass the Turing test—a criterion proposed in 1950 by English mathematician Alan Turing to determine whether a machine can “think.” Passing the test would mean that a human judge could not distinguish between artificial intelligence and human thoughts.

The science of brain freeze - Video

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via boingboing.net

It is 83 degrees in Aspen, Colorado—just hot enough that I started dreaming of ice cream as soon as I stepped off the plane.

Now, if I do find some ice cream and give myself a brain freeze while woolfing it down, I will have a better understanding of what that nasty cold-food headache is and how to combat it, thanks to this Scientific American video.

One of the things I like best about the video: Learning that, despite the ubiquity of the brain freeze, it’s still not 100% clear what causes it. In particular, there are several competing theories to explain why putting cold things in your mouth would make your forehead hurt. Nifty!

Your internet may be hurting your brain

via techi.com

The brain is a wonderful creation and the internet is often used to enhance or complement the capacity and recall within our most important organ. Unfortunately, technology has made it possible for us to actually overload our brains through the speed and volume through which we’re able to multitask online.

How many tabs are open on your computer right now? How many screens are you using? Is your iPad or smartphone close and do they have other things happening on them at the same time that you’re reading this?

How to Change Your Brian For the Better

via forbes.com

Our personalities, thought patterns and emotional responses are wired into our brains, says Richard Davidson, Ph.D., author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain, but you can change your brain. Here are several exercises that will help rewire the neural pathways to help you think more positively, become more self-aware, focus better, understand social cues, ease your emotional triggers and grow more resilient.