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What We Are Reading
Ernesto Ramirez
September 5, 2015
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Sep 5, 2015
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Sep 5, 2015
Richard Sprague is interested in understanding peak performance. Inspired by self-experimenter, Seth Roberts, Richard decided to test if consuming fish oil affected his response time. In this talk, Richard explores his data and discusses what he found out when he ran his analysis.
As a long-time meditator, Peter Lewis had a suspicion that meditation could improve brain function, so he conducted a self-experiment and enlisted a few other individuals to help test his hypothesis. By using an arithmetic testing application, a timed meditation app, and an ABA research design he was find out that there was some support…
Crystal Goh looks at brains every day, as part of her work in a brain and sleep imaging lab in Berkeley. She wanted to know how her brain was different from other brains, in a quantitative way. In the video below, Crystal explains voxel-based morphometry, normalization and standard deviation calculations, and the scary, revealing things…
Ryota Kanai does brain scans for a living. He can assess a person’s intelligence level, personality traits, and social proclivity from these scans. He even did a study correlating number of friends on Facebook with brain structure. In the video below, Ryota shows a 3-D scan of his brain, highlighted with colors to show where he…
I had to post one more breakout session description for next week’s conference, because this project is so fascinating to me! Check it out, from brain researcher Matt Keener: Our brains sit at the apex of primate evolution, making it possible for us to think, feel and be self-aware, all made possible through the unique…
At our June Bay Area Quantified Self Show&Tell, Jim Keravala of Flaii gave us a brief tour of the mind map he developed using TheBrain. He spends 1-2 hours a day entering information into his virtual brain, and has recorded about 65,000 thoughts so far. He feels that the main benefit he gets from it is enhanced recall, which has given…
This was the scene two days ago, when the lower floor of the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose was opened after hours to an energetic group of Quantified Self enthusiasts and interested spectators. The first 90 minutes was filled with mingling, enjoying healthy munchies, and gathering around the various devices that people brought…
Complete notes and reference links from Monday night’s terrific QS Show&Tell will be up later in the week, with an assist from Mark Carranza’s amazing idea archive. In the meantime, Steve Brown has shared the slides from his rapid-fire talk about 3banana. Steve had the misfortune of going last during an incredible, crowded meeting, and…
Noticing that flaxseed oil improved my balance led me to measure its effects on other tests of brain function. It also made me wonder what else in my life affected how well my brain works. Eventually I measured the mental effects of flaxseed oil with four tests, but each had problems: Balance. Time-consuming (15 minutes…
For a few months, I’ve been measuring how well my brain is working using arithmetic problems. Each test session includes 100 simple problems (3+4, 7-0, 4*8) divided into 5 blocks of 20. I type the last digit of the answer as quickly as possible. I got the idea from Tim Lundeen, who got better on…
[ ](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/opinion/08aamodt.html?em&ex=1194670800&en=87671c1cea6447e9&ei=5087%0A)Brain training games are fun for every fan of self-optimization. We don’t like to play them, we like to point out how unconvincing the evidence is that they really help your brain. Today in the New York Times, two neuroscientists take aim at brain training. They guess that the effectiveness of puzzles and mazes…
This [interesting blog](http://brainmagnets.blogspot.com/) by Dr. Topher Stephenson tracks the use of “neuromodulation” techniques, including electrical and magnetic stimulation of specific brain regions to produce desired changes in mood and behavior. This seemingly far-out technology is a major topic of applied research today, with new discoveries coming almost too fast to track. In [this post ](http://brainmagnets.blogspot.com/2007/09/9v-battery-for-depression.html),…