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October 24, 2008 - Google Tech Talks June 16, 2008 ABSTRACT Explore the brain's amazing ability to change throughout a person's life. This phenomenon-called neuroplasticty-is the science behind brain fitness, and it has been called one of the most extraordinary scientific discoveries of the 20th century. PBS had recently aired this special, The Brain Fitness Program, which explains the brain's complexities in a way that both scientists and people with no scientific background can appreciate. This is opportunity to learn more about how our minds work-and to find out more about the latest in cutting-edge brain research, from the founder of Posit Science and creator of the Brain Fitness Program software, Dr. Michael Merzenich. Speaker: Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. Michael M. Merzenich, PhD: Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Merzenich leads the company's scientific team. For more than three decades, Dr. Merzenich has been a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research. He is the Francis A. Sooy Professor at the Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences at UCSF. Dr. Merzenich is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Ipsen Prize, Zulch Prize of the Max Planck Institute, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award and Purkinje Medal. Dr. Merzenich has published more than 200 articles, including many in leading peer-reviewed journals, such as Science and Nature. His work is also often covered in the popular press, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek. He has appeared on Sixty Minutes II, CBS Evening News and Good Morning America. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invented the cochlear implant, now distributed by market leader Advanced Bionics. In 1996, Dr. Merzenich was the founding CEO of Scientific Learning Corporation (Nasdaq: SCIL), which markets and distributes software that applies principles of brain plasticity to assist children with language

Pre Historic Puzzles: Rocking the Cradle of Civilization For more than a century, archeologists were convincing that the cradle of civilization lay in Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. The learning of the advanced peoples of this region, it was thought, gradually moved west into Europe. But in the last few decades these theories have been overturned, thanks to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Willard F. Libby and a substance knows as carbon 14. Carbon 14 is a radioactive substance that exists in minute quantities. In the late 1940's Libby discovered that all plants and animals absorb it. When they die, the carbon-like all radioactive substances-begins to decay at a regular rate. Libby was able to measure this rate and could thus use carbon 14 as an archeological calendar. Today it is known that half of the carbon 14 in living organism disappears in 5,730 years, half of what remains in an additional 5,730 years, and so on. How old is old? Many of the items found at prehistoric sites are made of organic material. By measuring the amount of carbon 14 remaining in the shaft of an old ax or a piece of pottery, for example, scientists can accurately determine its age. Radiocarbon dating has proved to be phenomenally accurate: it can date to within 100 years going back to 50,000 B.C. It is particularly useful on wood because it can be checked against Dendron-chronology, dating by tree rings. A new ring forms every year in the trunk of a tree as it grows: counting the number of rings enables one to determine the age of any tree. Where did civilization begin?

Ian McEwan is a world-renowned Booker Prize-winning English novelist and screenwriter. Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of popular science. Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational...

Daniel Kahneman is an internationally renowned psychologist whose work spans cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and the science of well-being. In recognition of his groundbreaking work on human judgment and decision-making, Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Prize. In this program he explores