Stand Up and Try a Movement Snack!

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This month, the NPR podcast Ted Talk is presenting a 6-segment special called Body Electric, to explore how the way we use our tech devices is impacting our bodies. https://www.npr.org/series/1199526213/body-electric These days, many people’s jobs require hours of sitting in front of a computer. The popular fix of a standing desk does not appear to … Read more

Meditation and the Mind

Brain image made out of little cogwheels.

Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist researching the effect of meditation on the brain*, reports that in the state of open attention, non-directed awareness, there was diminished activity in an area of the brain that normally assigns emotional value, the orbitofrontal cortex. The results were consistent in all 6 of the adepts that were being studied. It … Read more

Try this experiment

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Follow the link to try this experiment. When viewing the video, see if you can count the total number of times that the people wearing white pass the basketball. How many passes?http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html Then watch it again. More at http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/djs_lab/demos.html Experiment Results I was introduced to the basketball pass experiment (see the post “Try this Experiment”) … Read more

Neuroscience of Touch: Touch and the Brain

Brain image made out of little cogwheels.

Introduction Have you ever felt the touch of someone’s hand on your shoulder and found yourself letting go of tension you didn’t even know you were holding? We can probably all remember the impact a touch has had on us, whether casually or in a therapeutic setting. As practitioners, we have daily experiences of the … Read more

Lab Concept

It is our proposal that cultivating Physical Intelligence will produce better researchers, scientists and engineers. Beyond fitness and the life skills typically associated with PE, Physical Intelligence offers students–regardless of their athletic ability–a chance to understand, experience and apply associations between exercise and academic disciplines in interdisciplinary labs, research and design. Funding is being sought … Read more

Categories PI

Technology

At MIT, innovative technology has a potentially powerful role to play in helping students explore and understand the wide range of benefits that physical activity, physical experiences and physical intelligence can afford. Insightful use of technology in PE offers students a range of immediate feedback options. Visual, tactile, auditory feedback of normally subtle aspects of … Read more

Categories PI

Joint classes

PE for ME: Physical Intelligence and the Engineering of Innovative Exercise Equipment Course Description The sensing, thinking, moving body is the basis of our experience in the world; it is the very foundation on which cognitive intelligence is built. Physical Intelligence, then, is the inherent ability of the human organism to function in extraordinary accord … Read more

Core Curriculum

Course Description Physical Intelligence classes take an experiential approach to the investigation and application of our innate ability to learn physical skills. Philosophically, the curriculum is founded on the premise that physical education is more than strength training, flexibility and aerobic fitness; physical education is also the development of our ability to access and benefit … Read more