Samuel Hunt

An Introduction to an Unheralded Secret among the World's Elite According to a recent survey conducted by YouGov (FIDE, 2012), there are an estimated 605 million Chess players in the world, the greatest portion of which are from 18-35 years old. Nearly 70% of the world's population has been active at Chess at some point during their lives. University graduates comprise over three-quarters of active Chess players, and approximately one-quarter of households with an income of over $100k are active Chess players. In fact, most all of the world's billionaires are Chess players: Gates, Ellison, Soros, van Oosterom, and others (Kroll & Dolan, 2013). In fact, even quite young entrepreneurs today, like Miami's Care Cloud founder Allbert Santalo (Cangemi, 2013), A.J. Steigman, founder and CEO of Soletron (Giang, 2012), and co-founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg (Stone, 2009) have a history of playing Chess and using its principles in creative business transactions. A...

The consummate principle underlying all physiological research is corporeal adaptation at every level of the organism observed. With respect to humans, the body learns to function based on the external stimuli from the environment, beginning in the womb, throughout the developmental stages of life. Nitric Oxide (NO) appears to be the governor of the plasticity of several systems in mammals implicit in their proper development. It is the purpose of this review to describe the physiological pathways that lead to plasticity of not only the vasculature but also of the brain and how physical activity plays a key role in those alterations by initiating the mechanism that triggers NO production. Further, this review hopes to show a connection between these changes and learning, comprising both motor learning and cognitive learning. This review will show how NO plays a significant role in vascularization and neurogenesis, necessary to enhance the mind-body connection and comprehensive physi...

The consummate principle underlying all physiological research is corporeal adaptation at every level of the organism observed. With respect to humans, the body learns to function based on the external stimuli from the environment, beginning in the womb, throughout the developmental stages of life. Nitric Oxide (NO) appears to be the governor of the plasticity of several systems in mammals implicit in their proper development. It is the purpose of this review to describe the physiological pathways that lead to plasticity of not only the vasculature but also of the brain and how physical activity plays a key role in those alterations by initiating the mechanism that triggers NO production. Further, this review hopes to show a connection between these changes and learning, comprising both motor learning and cognitive learning. This review will show how NO plays a significant role in vascularization and neurogenesis, necessary to enhance the mind-body connection and comprehensive physi...

This study seeks to establish groundwork for a new definition of learning based on neurogenesis capable of guiding future educational policy and practice. The purpose of the research was to: (1) produce separate increases in neurogenesis and intelligence, (2) measure the changes in neurogenesis using protein biomarkers, and (3) correlate increases in levels of the protein biomarkers with increases in intelligence. The study employed a randomized pretest-posttest, control/comparison group research design. Thirty-eight fourth- and fifth-grade students with diverse academic needs were divided
into three experimental groups: chess, exercise, and combined; with an additional control group. Pre-post measures included intelligence (RSPM) and two serum proteins (BDNF) and (VEGF). Multiple one-way ANOVAs between the groups with post-hoc Bonferroni pairwise correction discovered significant differences on post-IQ scores (1) between chess and control; (2) between those groups that received chess treatment and those that did not; and (3) between those groups that received chess and/or exercise treatment versus control. Paired sample t-tests found the exercise group and the combined group significantly increased BDNF pre-post. A Pearson Product Moment correlation revealed that the control group had the only significant post-test correlation between RSPM and BDNF (p = .049). Chess and exercise treatment led to increases in intelligence and biomarker levels associated with neurogenesis, as evidenced by increased RSPM and BDNF measures.

Draft proposal for research at UQ- Queensland Brain institute - Science of Learning Research Center. This project was canceled due to funding short-falls. I am seeking new institutions with which I can partner to complete this research and earn my PhD in Neuroscience and/or other Mind, Brain, Education science(s) field.

This is a cursory summation of a small portion of the mountain of evidence available for review of the effect chess has had on scholastic performance and its influence in cognitive psychological research.  In order to begin understanding the impact of chess, there is one apical principle that needs to be clearly understood when summarizing the effects chess produces and that is this: when the brain receives new information into long-term memory, new neural nets are formed, the brain is physiologically changed, and learning is expanded. Chess is a medium of pure information that thrusts the explorer into an unadulterated, intrinsically self-motivated, quest for discovery, perfection, and resolution.