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Mark Goulston is a psychiatrist, business consultant, executive coach, and trained hostage-negotiators for the FBI. See full bio

November 1, 2009, Neuroscience

2009 Neuroleadership Summit - How to foil an amygdala hijack

I just finished attending at the 2009 Neuroleadership Summit at UCLA.

In this increasingly competitive, survival of the fittest, winner take all, loser lose out world the spectre of man's inhumanity to man bubbles up as our common amygdalae are being hijacked daily.

I just finished attending and appearing as a panelist at the 2009 Neuroleadership Summit in Los Angeles from October 27-29. It's the brainchild of Psychology Today uberblogger, David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work and founder of Results Coaching and Dr. Al Ringleb, Professor at the University of Kansas and founder and head of CIMBA and this was their 4th international summit.

The speakers and presenters included some of the greatest thought leaders on leadership (Warren Bennis), transformation (Werner Erhard), neuroscience (Dr. Dan Siegel, Dr. Matt Lieberman, Dr. Marco Iacoboni, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz), education (Dr. John Joseph), sustainability (Cynthia Scott) and passionate journalists (Art Kleiner). The participants came from close to twenty different countries and from every continent.

The purpose of the Neuroleadership Institute is to join together neuroscience and leadership (or what I would call the "executive function" of the brain meets "executive function" of organizations) to work synergistically for the benefit of the world.

I think Psychology Today should consider becoming involved in this venture as well, because psychology, mindfulness, applied neuroscience or whatever you want to call it is mankind's best chance of improving performance and productivity without either taking a toll on humanity by helping business, leaders and neuroscientists to listen to and cooperate with each other.