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Part 1 of a 4-part series examining what happens when science is used for marketing (using brain-training software as the central example). Almost all of the programs that tout their ability to train your brain are limited in scope. Most train your ability to perform simple cognitive tasks by having you perform them repeatedly, often adapting the difficulty of the task over time to keep it challenging. Some determine which tasks you perform well and which need improvement and adjust the tasks based on your ongoing performance. The simplest ones, though, simply track how much you improve and inform you that such improvements have made increased the fitness of your brain. Such task-specific training effects can be really useful-if you want to enhance your ability to do Sudoku, by all means practice doing Sudoku. But what pitches for those programs regularly imply is that playing their videogame or using their training will enhance your ability to do other tasks that weren't specifically trained. For example, this advertisement for Nintendo's Brain Age implies that by using their game, you will be better able to remember your friend's name when you meet him on the street. The idea that playing games can improve your brain is pervasive, and it taps what Chris Chabris and I have called the "illusion of potential." A common myth of the mind is that we have vast pools of untapped mental resources that can be released with relatively minimal effort. This common intuitive belief underlies the pervasive myth that we only use 10% of our brains, that listening to Mozart can increase our IQ [pdf], and even the belief that some people have "discovered" psychic abilities. We devote the last main chapter of The Invisible Gorilla to this belief and its ramifications, and we recently wrote a column for the NY Times discussing how popular self-help books like The Secret and The Power capitalize on this mistaken belief. The marketing for some brain training programs

"Optical illusions are more than just a bit of fun. Scientist Beau Lotto is finding out what tricking the brain reveals about how our minds work. Here he explains his findings. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. We believe what our senses tell us but most of all we trust our eyes. But our brains are extraordinarily powerful organs. Without us realising it, they are instantly processing the information they receive to make sense of the world around us. And that has been crucial to our evolution. "

"Horizon explores the strange and wonderful world of illusions - and reveals the tricks they play on our senses and why they fool us."

Today, West Vancouver officials will roll out a new way to keep drivers alert and slow them down: a little girl speed bump. A trompe-l'œil, the apparently 3D girl located near the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School is actually a 2D pavement painting, similar to the one shown here.

All you Psych folks out there. What type of behavioral conditioning is this likely to create?!?!?

"Any love-hate relationship must have its share of pain, so the academic world, in its obsession with college rankings, is suitably dismayed by news that an elite college, Claremont McKenna, fudged its numbers in an apparent bid to climb the charts. Claremont McKenna in California is the latest but not the only college to have admitted submitting false information in an effort to win a high rating. Dismayed, but not quite surprised. In fact, several colleges in recent years have been caught gaming the system - in particular, the avidly watched U.S. News & World Report rankings - by twisting the meanings of rules, cherry-picking data or just lying. In one recent example, Iona College in New Rochelle, north of New York City, acknowledged last fall that its employees had lied for years not only about test scores, but also about graduation rates, freshman retention, student-faculty ratio, acceptance rates and alumni giving. Other institutions have found ways to manipulate the data without outright dishonesty. In 2008, Baylor University offered financial rewards to admitted students to retake the SAT in hopes of increasing its average score. Admissions directors say that some colleges delay admission of low-scoring students until January, excluding them from averages for the class admitted in September, while other colleges seek more applications to report a lower percentage of students accepted. Claremont McKenna, according to Robert Morse, the director of data research at U.S. News, is "the highest-ranking school to have to go through this publicly and have to admit to misreporting." This year, U.S. News rated it as the nation's ninth-best liberal arts college. There is no reason to think the U.S. News rankings are rife with misinformation, and the publication makes efforts to police the data, adjust its metrics and close loopholes. But repeated revelations of manipulation show the importance of the rankings in the minds of prospective students, thei

Fake speed humps, as flat as the street, but designed to appear three-dimensional, fool drivers into slowing down.

Are these Philly speed bump illusions better than Vancouver's? Does this suggest that Canadians are just plain demented? For more on Canadians: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pILPiB-07uI

"Beau Lotto's color games puzzle your vision, but they also spotlight what you can't normally see: how your brain works. This fun, first-hand look at your own versatile sense of sight reveals how evolution tints your perception of what's really out there."

"Since humankind first put brush to canvas, artists have played with the mind and the senses to create sublime atmospheres and odd impressions. It is only recently, with a blossoming understanding of the way the brain deconstructs images, that neuroscientists and psychologists have finally begun to understand how these tricks work. "