Working memory is “the ultimate evolutionary tool” that has helped us create everything from Google to the Eiffel Tower, according to authors and researchers Tracy Packiam Alloway, Ph.D, and Ross Alloway, Ph.D, in their new book The Working Memory Advantage: Train Your Brain to Function Stronger, Smarter, Faster.

They define working memory as “the conscious processing of information.” And in addition to inventing incredible innovations, working memory is critical for our daily lives.

In fact, the authors call working memory our brain’s conductor. Just as a musical conductor creates a symphony of melodies by instilling order to an orchestra of instruments, working memory instills order to the onslaught of information we confront day to day, including shifting to-do lists, emails, social media alerts, work projects and ringing phones.

So how can we supercharge this maestro of memory?

Sex, drugs & rock n’ roll. Ever wondered why those three things go together in this famous expression?

Neuroaesthetics is the relatively recent study of questions such as “Why do we like the things we like?” and “Why do some people find one thing pleasing while others find it appalling?” It has focused on issues such as creativity, visual and motor processing in visual artists and the varying factors involved in creative domains.

Many of these studies have examined music and the neural activity that occurs when we listen to and evaluate what we hear.

Salimpoor and Zatorre (2013) reviewed a number of research studies examining the effects of music on brain activity; in particular activity that relates to the feeling of pleasure. The evidence was clear: not only does music boost our sense of pleasure but there is also a dopamine activity in anticipation to the music that “touches us.”

When we’re stressed, if often feels like everything begins to fall apart. It’s during stressful times that we misplace our keys, forget important events on our calendars, fail to call our mothers on their birthdays and leave important work documents at home.

Now, in addition to your original stressor, you’re under more pressure because you’re scrambling to find lost keys, dealing with hurt feelings or frantically reconstructing forgotten projects.

And on top of that, when stressed, our emotions are running rampant. That scramble for the keys is anything but calm and a remark from your mother about that missed phone call can send you deep into guilt.

“You idiot. Can’t you do anything right? I asked you to do a simple task. And what did you do? You screwed it up big time. What the hell is the matter with you?”

Some people believe that humiliation is a good teacher. You gotta learn. You must not forget. You will be punished if you don’t do it right. Humiliation will make a lesson stick.

These folks are right — humiliation is a good teacher.

But the lesson you learn is not what the teacher is intending. You don’t learn to do things better. You don’t learn to upgrade your skills. You don’t learn to trust your ability to learn.

As I write this, our thoughts are with those in Boston who were affected by the bombings at the 2013 Boston Marathon.

In my 20 years living in the Boston area, I cheered on the runners on many occasions and now, even from far way, these events feel close to home.

Experiencing trauma can have a dramatic effect on our bodies and our minds.  And although it’s a different experience to witness a trauma on television, it still can affect us.

When you perceive a threat, the body activates the stress response. The stress response occurs in both your body and brain.

The body’s response to acute stress is a preparation for emergency.  Adrenaline and other hormones are released.  The body shuts down processes associated with long-term care.  When under immediate threat, digestion, reproduction, cell repair and other body tasks related to long-term functioning are unimportant.

In the information age, personalization and customization are remarkable themes in technology, goods, and services. There is no one brand of toothpaste, or one kind of refrigerator — there are hundreds of each. There is no one kind of phone — there are hundreds of them, each able to be tailored with cases, covers, backgrounds, and apps.

And now, there are even designer babies: Parents are able to choose their children’s hair and eye color (though according to Wired, the Los Angeles clinic offering these services was recently shut down amid public outcry).

The potential for humans to modulate their emotions via technology is just as radical.

Shame really should be on the list of deadly diseases. It may not actually murder a physical body, but it has the capacity to barrage the soul to the point of psychological imprisonment. It attacks our sense of self-worth and destroys our ability to be fully alive.

If it were actually effective, I would wholeheartedly join you in your strike against shame, holding signs to keep it out of the psyche and saying, “Shame on you, shame.” But from my experience, it usually just grows into an angry beast. It haunts us day and night until we do something about it.

Pushing away the shame isn’t the answer. So what is?

Sharing the shame with a trusted person is what will heal us.

Though much has been written about how to deal with parents who are slowing down physically and mentally, I’ve read nothing about how to deal with parents who have become wiser and kinder.

It may seem like there’s no problem if your parents have become better people. Just count your blessings and get on with life! But it’s not always that simple.

Mike grumbles, “I can’t believe my father wants to be so involved with my kids. When I was growing up, he barely gave me the time of day. “Shut up! Do your homework! Listen to your mother!” That was pretty much the extent of our relationship. And now, he wants to take my son to school, coach his games, take him on a trip. Who is this new person? And how come I got the short end of the stick?”

Kim gripes, “My mother was always on my case. I had to dress right, speak right, eat right and live right. Otherwise, what would people think? Now, when I berate my daughter for not acting properly, my mother comes to her defense, telling me that I’m too hard on her. It makes me furious. She was 10 times harder on me than I am on my daughter. What’s going on here?”

I was a young lady who muddled her way through this world. Lost in bizarre depression and mood disorder, with a heavy load on my shoulders, I was uncertain about the direction of my future. I had thoughts of suicide from a very young age and much of my time was spent either contemplating suicide or experimenting with it.

Plummeting into darkness on occasion made me a burden. When insomnia attacks, I get frustrated and the anxiety builds up — that deep gut feeling where everything is my fault. It’s 3 A.M. and I think about all the times people have promised me that things will get better. But they don’t.

I’m in the office with the psychiatrist and he diagnoses me with the “bad medicine.” He tells me it works for manic-depressive symptoms in children. It was the dark purple kind. In other words — bipolar. But my mood disorder is not that heavily diagnosed yet.

In his play The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare wrote, “But love is blind, and lovers cannot see / The pretty follies that themselves commit” (2.6.36-37).

Clearly, people have been perceiving love as a force incapable of perceiving the flaws of others for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Even a verse in the Bible states that “[love] keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:5-6).

But here lies the conundrum: how can love both “rejoice in the truth” and “keep no record of wrongs”? Wouldn’t ignoring the wrongdoings of love be an untruthful perception of it?

And yet this is the theory behind the love-is-blind bias.

“A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.”
~ Anonymous

The one thing about life that is certain is its unpredictability. Nothing stays the same forever. Every day we are bombarded with new stimuli, new challenges and new events.

For some of us, unpredictability creates a state of panic; it keeps us up at night and distracts us from enjoying the world around us. People like being in control of their social world and vulnerability is seen as a sign of weakness.

Uncertainty is so abhorred that Berger and Calabrese (1975) proposed the uncertainty reduction theory. The theory asserts that the anxiety created by uncertainty of the social world motivates people to reduce and avoid uncertainty.

So how can we better navigate around life’s inevitable detours?

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi’s quote — and others’ psychological research — suggest that we are designed to interact with each other. In fact, our interactions with others come second to our interaction with ourselves.

If interactions with others are so important, why do we struggle to initiate and maintain relationships?

A search on the Internet for articles on interaction/relationships reveals what appears to be innumerable research papers on verbal and nonverbal communication. However, many who highlight relationship-building skills ignore a crucial factor.

To rephrase Descartes (who famously said “I think, therefore I am”), “we think, therefore we interact” confirms that we first have some thought about the person we intend to interact with. If our cognitive processes set the tone for our interaction then highlighting errors in cognition is useful.