On 8/20/2013 6:38 PM, Justin Dearing wrote:
Can you provide a link to that study? I've never heard that, and my
gut says it's folk wisdom that "experts" use to justify their behaviour.
Unfortunately not offhand. I read it on the internet so it must be
true? :-)
Honestly though, I think I read about it in Pragmatic Thinking and
Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, by Andy Hunt
http://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning
It was a very interesting book with lots of little tidbits. The most
fun "new to me" fact was when he was....disparaging the idea of
cube-farms. He referenced a wide spread belief that we only have a set
number of brain cells, they don't grow back. I recall learning this
back in school as part of all the anti-drinking classes[ie "alcohol
kills brain cells and you don't grown any new ones!"] This bit of
wisdom is based on a decades old study of rats where it was found that
they stopped growing new brain cells after adulthood. What had been
overlooked was the environmental factors: ie these were rats kept in a
sterile environment, no stimulation, nothing new, every day the same old
same old[making the obvious analogy to cubicles and their sameness].
Take those rats and give them changing environments and stimulation and
low and behold, they do grow new brain cells.
http://www.livescience.com/505-adult-brain-cells-growing.html
Now, I'm not quite sure I'd buy into comparing working in a cubicle to
being a rat in a lab, since you DO still have mental stimulation for the
projects one works on.
Unfortunately my copy is at my brothers, so I can't look it up.
_______________________________________________
New York PHP User Group Community Talk Mailing List
http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
http://www.nyphp.org/show-participation
