Whether finding your way through an unfamiliar neighborhood to a friend’s house or deciding on a political candidate, your brain is adept at adapting. It can make decisions based on incomplete information and update those decisions based on new information.

The nature of such sophisticated decision making in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for high-level processing, has been “poorly studied and little understood,” according to Wako Yoshida and Shin Ishii of the Nara Institute of Science and Technology. Now, however, in an article in the June 1, 2006, Neuron, they describe experiments that enabled them to tease apart how different regions of the cerebral cortex process uncertain information and integrate it into decision making.

In particular, their aim was to analyze subjects’ navigation through a virtual maze, to explore how different cortical regions function in solving “partially observable decision-making problems.”

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As a human being, I’m proud to say I have biases. Having biases is what separates me from the machines I live with. Although it is debatable, I tend to believe that biases serve a useful purpose – to some degree. Knowing I have biases helps me communicate, make choices, respond, and live with far less stress.

To believe you are unbiased is to say you are inhuman or a machine. Admitting your biases helps you take charge of them. And in taking charge of your biases you can take charge of your life. Further, in understanding your biases and how they work you become a more useful and stress-free member of your society.

In this article, I have copied liberally from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. As you read the list of cognitive biases along with their variants, I hope you, too, will find some value. Maybe you’ll notice some biases you didn’t know you had. You can’t truly gauge any of the biases you might be operating under since it’s not possible to accurately observe a system of which you’re a part. Still, you may be able to note biases you see in others and by association assign them to yourself – and maybe notice how you might operate the same bias you see in another.

Remember: knowing you have biases helps you take charge of them. Understanding how your biases work helps you understand yourself and others better. This understanding can serve you and your community in a number of ways.

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What if you could be guaranteed of success at ANYTHING you did? What would you do differently?

First, let’s take a moment to consider the relationship between success and failure.

You are always successful at everything you actually DO. AND – you are always successful in NOT doing what you don’t do.

What you do may not match your desire. And, your environment may give you the impression that you have failed at something. Yet, because you have actually DONE SOMETHING, you have succeeded in doing that something, whatever it is. Likewise, for those things you do not do, you have succeeded in not doing them.

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Directing a person’s eye movements or attention in specific patterns can also aid in solving complex problems.

A new study appearing in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, is the first to show that a person’s ability to solve a problem can be influenced by how he or she moves.

“Our manipulation [of the body] is changing the way people think,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras, who along with Vanderbilt University postdoctoral researcher Laura Thomas, conducted the study. “In other words, by directing the way people move their bodies, we are – unbeknownst to them - directing the way they think about the problem.”

“The results are interesting both because body motion can affect higher order thought, the complex thinking needed to solve complicated problems, and because this effect occurs even when someone else is directing the movements of the person trying to solve the problem,” Lleras said.

According to Lleras, this type of consciousness, “embodied cognition,” describes the link between body and mind in a new and insightful way.

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