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Is Living In Cities Making Us More Intelligent?

In a discussion of the five major trends that will change the world over the next 25 years, star architect Daniel Libeskind recently told Conde Nast that the long-term trend toward urbanization will help human creativity. Living in densely populated spaces all over the globe will make us all smarter. In fact, he even went so far as to state that “already, New Yorkers are smarter than people who live in gigantic houses." If you happen to live in a city like New York, this probably squares up with your own thinking and may even appear to be so obvious as to be barely worth mentioning. But is that really the case – that living in cities will make us all smarter?

Certainly, that’s been the major thesis of at least the past decade - a decade that may be summarized as The Triumph of the City. During that time, there has been growing awareness of cities as vibrant, energizing spaces for members of the creative class (and those who would be their friends). In fact, in The Triumph of the City, urban economist Edward Glaeser even goes further than that, suggesting that cities are making us richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier. Not surprisingly, we’ve seen the demographic pendulum shift – not just in the United States, where the exurbs and suburbs are being hollowed out as people move back into more densely populated urban hubs – but also abroad, where countries like China are seeing the growth of the mega-city on a scale never before imagined. For now, the city is the natural home of the creative class, and certainly the home of wonderfully talented people like Daniel Libeskind, an uber-globetrotting cultural tastemaker.

But let’s play devil’s advocate for a second. After all, wasn't it not so long ago that we viewed cities as dangerous, crime-ridden and nasty little places to live? And, let's take Darwin into account. In mid-November, Stanford researcher Gerald Crabtree made waves in the scientific community with his mischievous assertion that the continuing process of urbanization is actually making us dumber. With a nod to Darwin, Crabtree suggests that everything that makes survival easier and simpler actually reduces some of the selection pressures in the environment, and that, in turns, weakens natural selection's ability to weed out all the people with the "stupid" gene. Or, as Crabtree puts it, “A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his or her progeny, whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate." 

At a time when nearly 50% of the world now lives in cities, one senses that we're at a tipping point for thinking about the future. Half of the world lives in cities, the other half doesn't. For now, cities appear to be enormous cauldrons of creativity, diversity and intelligence. Skyscrapers appear to be engines of enormous growth and vitality. At some point, however, the demographic pendulum will surely shift again - we'll decide that our urban areas are simply too dangerous, too dirty, and too unpleasant and we'll all decamp en masse to a less urbanized environment where we can all become richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier.

http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/is-living-in-cities-making-us-smarter

http://bigthink.com/

The Benefits of Bilingualism

Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.

In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.

The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function — a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind — like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.

Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.

The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.” In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.

The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).

In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, 7-month-old babies exposed to two languages from birth were compared with peers raised with one language. In an initial set of trials, the infants were presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.

Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.

Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint?

By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r=2&src=tp&smid=fb-share&
http://www.nytimes.com/

Body-building Hypnosis

Building muscle is just as much a mental activity as it is physical. The mind controls the body. If your mind does not want to go through hard and heavy workouts, your body will not want to either. You will end up solely going through the motions and training without the intensity required for maximum gains.

Many professional bodybuilders and top athletes already use psychological techniques to give them that 'edge'. Arnold Schwartzenegger used to visualise his muscles growing bigger and bigger, until they literally “filled the room”. The record breaking and 400 meter Olympic champion Lee Evans owes some of his success to visualizing every stride of the race. His strategy is to "search out and correct weaknesses in every step I take". Tiger Woods' mental coach, Jay Brunza, hypnotises him to block out distractions so that he can focus purely on his golf.

There is one hidden reason why many people fail to build muscle or improve their physical attributes. That reason is that their unconscious mind will not let them

Bodybuilding requires supreme amounts of personal discipline in the face of temptation. It demands discipline over the mind and body as you face pain and fatigue at each training session in an attempt to surpass yourself. It demands discipline to keep working and moving towards your goals for many years. There is a saying that the ‘will gives up before the muscle’. If you can increase your will with mental techniques, then you can increase your training intensity, and thus increase your gains.

Bodybuilding also requires mindfulness. You must be mindful about the foods you eat and how this will affect your mind and body.

Being present in the moment when training, and being mindful about what you are doing turns weight lifting into a meditative pursuit. Focusing on the muscle as it contracts and relaxes creates a powerful mind-body connection. This allows you to move and squeeze your muscles in a way that maximises your growth potential.

Every time you lift a weight, your mind must lift it first. You must see yourself lifting it, and believe that you can lift it. I have seen many times someone accidentally picking up a heavier weight than they intended and complete their training sets with it. They thought they could lift it, so this removed the mental block that they previously had.

You sometimes hear people say they want to achieve something to only then follow it up with excuses, such as “I just don’t think that it’s possible.” Or “I don’t have the genetics” They have already defeated themselves mentally. Lots of people compare their talent to someone else's, and when they see how far away they are from achieving this, they give up. The person who believes – achieves. How can you achieve anything without the belief? You will simply go about it half heartedly, if at all.

Hypnosis can help you improve all these mental approaches. Hypnosis can help you establish your goals clearly through visualisation. You can also rehearse and practice with visualisation. Hypnosis can also help you believe you can achieve your goals, and keep you motivated to stick with your plan. There is also some evidence to suggest that through hypnosis, you can direct your body’s energies to places you wish to develop. Arnie was simply telling his body to build up his muscles when he visualised them growing bigger and bigger.

It is also widely documented that hypnosis can increase emotional responses in the body. These can be harnessed to release testosterone, which can further help muscular development. If you are serious about increasing your muscular, or indeed any other sporting abilities, then hypnosis could help you unlock your potential and go that extra yard you need for success.

http://www.hypnobusters.com/articles/bodybuildinghypnosis.html

http://www.hypnobusters.com/

How To Build Muscle Mass: The Ultimate Guide For Skinny Guys To Gain Muscle Fast.
https://www.massgainsource.com/how-to-build-muscle-mass-fast/