10 Whole Brain Essentials for Leadership and Learning in the Innovative Era - Dr Ellen Weber

Ask – don’t tell. What if you were to ask one innovative question to a leader you encounter? What if you held back a strong opinion, in favor of learning from others today? Imagine the ground-breaking results for innovative workplace solutions you pioneer. Yet experts remind us how innovation loses because leaders remain locked in the past. Sadly, innovative opportunities get stomped on by narrow-minded demands. It doesn’t have to be that way! Can you see growth benefits for holistic leading that inspires organizational change?

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Study of artists' brain injuries hints at roots of creativity - Paul Jablow

In 1997, when she was 44, a massive stroke cost painter Katherine Sherwood the permanent use of her right hand. Today, the Bay Area artist is painting with her left hand, her career more successful than ever. Back in 1980, an aneurysm from a previously undiagnosed brain abnormality required surgery that completely wiped out noted jazz guitarist Pat Martino's musical memory. Surgeons told him he had been two hours away from death, put him to sleep, and removed 60 percent of his left temporal lobe. Playing with a computer and listening to his old recordings, Martino, who lives in South Philadelphia, taught himself to play again and has made more than a dozen albums. In 2004 he won the Downbeat magazine readers poll as "Guitarist of the Year."

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All Memory Loss Is Due to Brain Abnormalities - Rachel Howell Stockton, FoodConsumer.org

A new study claims that mild to moderate memory loss, or mental decline, in adulthood can be attributed to abnormal brain lesions associated with Alzheimer’s. In other words, a decrease in mental acuity may not be a result of mere aging. The research was led by Robert S. Wilson, senior neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Center at Rush University Medical Center. The 16 year study focused on a group of 354 catholic nuns, priests and brothers; over the course of the study, the participants were regularly checked for mental acuity up to 14 times before they died. Specifically, they were checked in the following areas: verbal fluency, perceptual speed and IQ. Additional three “types” of memory were assessed:

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Smart People Thinking about People Thinking about People Thinking - MIT's Rebecca Saxe probes mechanics of judgment, beliefs

How do we know what other people are thinking? How do we judge them, and what happens in our brains when we do? MIT neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe is tackling those tough questions and many others. Her goal is no less than understanding how the brain gives rise to the abilities that make us uniquely human–making moral judgments, developing belief systems and understanding language. It’s a huge task, but “different chunks of it can be bitten off in different ways,” she says. Saxe, who joined MIT’s faculty in 2006 as an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, specializes in social cognition–how people interpret other people’s thoughts. It’s a difficult subject to get at, since people’s thoughts and beliefs can’t be observed directly.

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The drivers of the leadership brain - to acquire, to defend, to bond, to comprehend - HBR

"Humans have evolved a leadership brain," says HBS professor emeritus Paul R. Lawrence. "Good leaders are people with a conscience who respect and reward all the four drives of other stakeholders [the drive to acquire, to defend, to bond, and to comprehend], even as they respect and reward their own drives." Inspired by the writings and insights of Charles Darwin, specifically his 1871 masterwork The Descent of Man, Lawrence's new book, Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership, offers managers an integrated understanding of the complex decision process at the heart of good and wise leadership. In the following excerpt, Lawrence describes how various forms of globalization—classic trading, international sales, and transnational outsourcing—reveal examples of good, bad, and misguided leadership behavior through the lens of humans' four drives.

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