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Mary Fahey Colbert

Amazon.com: The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memor... - 0 views

  • As the pace of technological change accelerates, we are increasingly experiencing a state of information overload. Statistics show that we are interrupted every three minutes during the course of the work day. Multitasking between email, cell-phone, text messages, and four or five websites while listening to an iPod forces the brain to process more and more informaton at greater and greater speeds. And yet the human brain has hardly changed in the last 40,000 years. Are all these high-tech advances overtaxing our Stone Age brains or is the constant flood of information good for us, giving our brains the daily exercise they seem to crave? In The Overflowing Brain, cognitive scientist Torkel Klingberg takes us on a journey into the limits and possibilities of the brain. He suggests that we should acknowledge and embrace our desire for information and mental challenges, but try to find a balance between demand and capacity. Klingberg explores the cognitive demands, or "complexity," of everyday life and how the brain tries to meet them. He identifies different types of attention, such as stimulus-driven and controlled attention, but focuses chiefly on "working memory," our capacity to keep information in mind for short periods of time. Dr Klingberg asserts that working memory capacity, long thought to be static and hardwired in the brain, can be improved by training, and that the increasing demands on working memory may actually have a constructive effect: as demands on the human brain increase, so does its capacity. The book ends with a discussion of the future of brain development and how we can best handle information overload in our everyday lives. Klingberg suggests how we might find a balance between demand and capacity and move from feeling overwhelmed to deeply engaged. Show More Show Less
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    As the pace of technological change accelerates, we are increasingly experiencing a state of information overload. Statistics show that we are interrupted every three minutes during the course of the work day. Multitasking between email, cell-phone, text messages, and four or five websites while listening to an iPod forces the brain to process more and more informaton at greater and greater speeds. And yet the human brain has hardly changed in the last 40,000 years. Are all these high-tech advances overtaxing our Stone Age brains or is the constant flood of information good for us, giving our brains the daily exercise they seem to crave? In The Overflowing Brain, cognitive scientist Torkel Klingberg takes us on a journey into the limits and possibilities of the brain. He suggests that we should acknowledge and embrace our desire for information and mental challenges, but try to find a balance between demand and capacity. Klingberg explores the cognitive demands, or "complexity," of everyday life and how the brain tries to meet them. He identifies different types of attention, such as stimulus-driven and controlled attention, but focuses chiefly on "working memory," our capacity to keep information in mind for short periods of time. Dr Klingberg asserts that working memory capacity, long thought to be static and hardwired in the brain, can be improved by training, and that the increasing demands on working memory may actually have a constructive effect: as demands on the human brain increase, so does its capacity. The book ends with a discussion of the future of brain development and how we can best handle information overload in our everyday lives. Klingberg suggests how we might find a balance between demand and capacity and move from feeling overwhelmed to deeply engaged.  
Mary Fahey Colbert

Multitasking Behaviors Mapped to the Prefrontal Cortex: National Institute of Neurologi... - 0 views

    • Mary Fahey Colbert
       
      I wonder if this is the same study referenced in the National Geo article about the teenage brain.  Check this.
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    Tasks performed by the volunteers involved exercises to test working memory, attentional focus, and a combination of the two. All of the subjects, who were healthy, normal volunteers, participated in all of the task groups. The task groups consisted of a control task, a delayed-response task, a dual-task, and a branching conditions task. Dual-task involves changing focus between alternative goals successively. The investigators predicted that subject performance on the individual delayed-response task and dual-task conditions would not activate the FPPC. They did predict that the branching task which involves problem solving and planning would stimulate activity in the FPPC. According to the fMRI data, their predictions were correct. The FPPC was activated only during those tasks that involved an interaction between working memory and attentional focus decisions.
Mary Fahey Colbert

Joanne Cantor: Multitasking exercises - YouTube - 0 views

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    Another clip to watch later that might be helpful for impressing kids with the reason not to multitask while trying to learn.
Mary Fahey Colbert

Joanne Cantor: The Bad News about Multitasking - YouTube - 0 views

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    Watch this later.  It might be a good video to show students about the downsides of multitasking.  Joanne Cantor has other ones with actual "exercises" for addressing multitasking.
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