Neuroscience

Your brain is locked in silence and darkness inside your skull, and all it is trying to do is understand the structures of the world so it can operate in it better. Whenever it encounters a surprise, it writes that down and it makes changes to your circuitry.

But as you go through life and your brain develops better models of the world, less and

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one of the latest big theories in neuroscience says that humans are fundamentally creatures of prediction, and not only is creativity not at odds with that, but it actually goes hand in hand with improving our predictive power. Life itself, in this view, is one big process of creatively optimizing prediction as a survival strategy in a universe... See more

Learned helplessness, the failure to escape shock induced by uncontrollable aversive events, was discovered half a century ago. Seligman and Maier (1967) theorized that animals learned that outcomes were independent of their responses—that nothing they did mattered – and that this learning undermined trying to escape. The mechanism of learned... See more

While most people tend to be optimistic, those suffering from depression and anxiety have a bleak view of the future — and that in fact seems to be the chief cause of their problems, not their past traumas nor their view of the present. While traumas do have a lasting impact, most people actually emerge stronger afterward. Others continue... See more

Could gaming enhance brain plasticity and executive functions (EFs) by fostering creativity? We identify vital benefits from further research exploring the relationship between games, brain plasticity, and creativity.