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Successful, positive people have different brain connections

  
Analysis, Education, Video
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Scientists have for the first time observed a connection between particular brain centers and the presence of talent, success and positive lifestyle choices in people. The fMRI technique opens the door to extensive research which could improving human cognition.

The research was undertaken by the University of Oxford’s Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB). It took a large sample of 461 individuals, and crossed them with 280 behavioral traits, as well as demographic, traits – including language, vocabulary, education, income and others.

 

 

The initiative was part of the $30 million Human Connectome Project (HCP), funded by the US National Institutes of Health, aimed at studying the neural pathways of the brain. In this particular study, the Oxford team wished to create an average map of the brain’s processes.

“You can think of it as a population-average map of 200 regions across the brain that are functionally distinct from each other,” Professor Stephen Smith of Oxford University, said.

“Then, we looked at how much all of those regions communicated with each other, in every participant.”

The resulting maps, which the scientists called connectomes, included 280 behavioral and demographic traits for each subject. Compiling all data, a ‘canonical correlation analysis’ was able to establish correlations between the two data sets.

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How Stephen Hawking Understands The Universe In 150 Seconds [VIDEO]

  
Analysis, Education, Video
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Have you ever wondered how the legendary Stephen Hawking thinks about the universe? He has worked on some of the most mind-boggling physics and cosmology questions, like what’s at the center of a black hole. This video from The Guardian’s Made Simpleseries, animated by Scriberia, explains some of the main ideas of Hawking’s complex theories from his book A Brief History of Time, in just 150 seconds.

Here are some of the highlights from the video.

What actually is at the center of a black hole? A singularity – or tons of matter packed into a tiny space. That high concentration of matter basically creates infinite gravity – that’s why nothing can escape a black hole.

What happens when a black hole disappears? It explodes, and the explosion has a force equivalent to a million nuclear bombs.

Why is Stephen Hawking so well-known? His work suggests that at one point, everything in our universe was squeezed into one of those singularities. Then, it exploded into the universe as we know it now.

The Art of Choosing

  
Analysis, Education, Video
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Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices — and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

We all want customized experiences and products — but when faced with 700 options, consumers freeze up. With fascinating new research, Sheena Iyengar demonstrates how businesses (and others) can improve the experience of choosing.

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