Here’s another one I’m coming late to, but it’s so cool I can’t pass it up: Ogi Ogas, a cognitive neuroscientist, won $500,000 on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” — and he did so by employing a handful of mind-hacking tricks he derived from his knowledge of the brain.

For example, for his $16,000 question, he relied on the technique of “priming”. Because memories are stored in many different parts of the brain, if you can manage to recall any single part of a pattern, your brain can often fill in missing, related parts. In a superb piece about the experience in Seed magazine, Ogas explains how priming helped him out:

Since the producers allow contestants unlimited time to work out answers (as long as they’re not just stalling), I knew that I could employ the most basic of priming tactics: talking about the question, posing scenarios, throwing out wild speculations, even just babbling — trying to cajole my prefrontal neurons onto any cue that could trigger the buried neocortical circuits holding the key to the answer.

I used priming on my $16,000 question: “This past spring, which country first published inflammatory cartoons of the prophet Mohammed?” I did not know the answer. But I did know I had a long conversation with my friend Gena about the cartoons. So I chatted with [Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host] Meredith about Gena. I tried to remember where we discussed the cartoons and the way Gena flutters his hands. As I pictured how he rolls his eyes to express disdain, Gena’s remark popped into my mind: “What else would you expect from Denmark?”

I personally am all in favor of the trend towards using brain-hacking and mind-hacking tricks in everyday life. It’s like a sort of fine-grained version of cognitive behavioral therapy — observing yourself and your mind’s odd, curious spastic gestures to help navigate life.

(Thanks to the Corante Brain Waves blog for this one!)