Dario Nardi
leading edge insights in brains, games, and psyche
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Dario Nardi, Ph.D. is an international author, researcher, speaker and expert in neuroscience, personality, game design, and body-mind practices. He holds a Senior Lecturer position at University of California (Los Angeles), where he won UCLA's Copenhaver Award for Innovative Use of Technology in 2005 and UCLA's Distinguished Teacher of the year in 2011. His books include Neuroscience of Personality, 8 Keys to Self-Leadership, Jung on Yoga, The Magic Diamond, Decode Your Personality, Teaching Tales for the 16 Personality Types, and Facets of Ayahuasca, among other titles. He also writes game books and fiction. And he is the creator of the Personality Types iPhone app. Since 2006, Dario has focused on conducting hands-on brain research, utilizing insights of real-time EEG technology. Applications extend to coaching, counseling, education, games, healthcare, leadership development, yoga, and many other areas. He regularly keynotes conferences and facilitates workshops, teaching professionals about the art and science of the brain. Dario is currently based in Prescott, Arizona and Oslo, Norway.
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Radiance House
Dario is founder and director of Radiance House (www.RadianceHouse.com), a media and books company, from 2007 to the present. Radiance House publishes high-quality books, software and related materials in three subject areas: personality/organizational psychology, body/mind practices, and fantasy/sci-fi gaming. Many book titles appear at www.Amazon.com or in affiliate online stores.Readers span the globe and include employees of brand name and governmental organizations that leverage the benefits of personality for understanding, teamwork, and leadership.
Neuro-Consulting & Partnerships
Ever wonder how your brain works? Dario offers actual brain-imaging for individuals and teams, either at his lab, alongside conferences, or by invitation. Interested persons can partake in an actual 90-minute brain-imaging assessment in Los Angeles or nearby cities or in the UK, France, and Norway at select times. Visit and scroll to the bottom here to learn more and schedule an appointment.As a consultant with SAYFR, Dario designs gamified training scenarios. These 3D simulations use the UNITY engine and require players address technical and interpersonal challenges. Dario creates characters and writes scripts for such games, and he uses brain imaging to measure engagement and help improve these games.
With Puzzlin.Org (c.f. Brain-Insights), Dario works with young adults, executive teams, public figures, coaches & consultants, voters, consumers, and others to provide deep science-based insights into skills, personality, thinking, emotions, and preferences. For example, in partnership with Attentional, a media advisement company, Dario has used EEG with small TV and film audiences to evaluate and make suggestions for TV shows and films. These cutting-edge applications utilize the simplicity and power of EEG neuro-imaging technology.
Neuroscience Research
Since 2007, Dario has conducted intensive and varied hands-on neuroscience research using EEG technology. He focuses on practical application of the brain research and personality to coaching, counseling, educating, leading, and such. Watch this up-to-date 2-hour video from 2019 in Paris. Or, try this older 90-minute video from 2011 at Google.For an in-depth report of his ongoing research, please see Neuroscience of Personality: Brain-Savvy Insights for All Types of People found at www.radiancehouse.com or search among the options at the Radiance House online store.
For regular updates, please join the community at www.Facebook.com/NeuroTypes.
Dario's lab research focuses on links between cognitive skills, emotional dynamics, personality characteristics, and behavior as expressed through local and global patterns of activity in the neocortex. In his research, he asks subjects to try a wide variety of tasks—from math and music to story-telling and speed-dating. During the hour, subjects tend to display recurrent patterns in frequency and amplitude in particular neocortical regions as well as across the whole neocortex. People also prefer particular networks. Among the most interesting patterns is a "flow state" that occurs when a person engages in creative expertise or a pallet of other activities distinctly related to personality characteristics. People also show differences between current brain activity and long-term neural wiring that results from years of habits.
In addition to presenting ongoing results, Dario focuses on likely implications for skill building, coaching, communication, leadership, problem solving, education, and other application areas. As part of this, certified professions may use pencil-paper and free online self-assessment tools such as the NeuroPQ at www.NeuroPQ.com.
University Teaching & Awards
From 1998 to 2012, Dario taught as an assistant adjunct, lecturer or fellow at University of California (Los Angeles) in four programs including Program in Computing, Anthropology, Honors Collegium, and Human Complex Systems. Currently, he teaches part time and holds a position of Senior Lecturer.Courses taught include: Intro. to Programming, Intro. to Programming for the Internet, Intro. to Computing for Social Science & Humanities, Artificial Intelligence, Modeling and Simulation of Social Systems, Modeling and Simulation Laboratory, and Artificial Culture Laboratory. He also acted as the Human Complex Systems faculty advisor and taught numerous independent study courses covering topics such as cognitive processes, neuroscience of personality, and game design. He wrote Modeling and Simulation in the Social Sciences. Moreover, after he supervised over 1500 research projects, he edited a collection of best projects in Readings in Formal Modeling and Simulation in the Social Sciences. Enquire with Dario for details.
Dario supervised two instances of the Lake Arrowhead Annual Conference on Multi-Agent Modeling in the Social Sciences. He also wrote experiment-based software for fellow instructors on such topics as prospect theory and meme diffusion through friendship networks.
While at UCLA, Dario won three awards: the 2005 Copenhaver Award for Innovative Use of Technology in the Classroom; the Outstanding Professor Award, granted in 2007 by UCLA's Mortor Board Honor Society; and UCLA's 2011 annual Distinguished Teaching award.
As a popular instructor, Dario often incorporates non-traditional teaching techniques such as outdoor live-group simulation activities, robot-human stage plays, and software-based audio-visual experimentation to teach New Science concepts such as emergence, attractors, nonlinear feedback, multi-agency, and living systems theory. He is a fan of tools such as Fuzzy Cognitive Maps and Multi-agent Models as ways to better understand complex phenomena.
Personality Theory
Dario gained Myers-Briggs personality certification in 1994 under the instruction of Dr. Linda Berens (www.LindaBerens.com) and has been intimately involved in product development and research of personality-based tools ever since.He is the author or coauthor of numerous books on personality including Neuroscience of Personality, 8 Keys to Self-Leadership, The Magic Diamond: Jung's 8 Paths for Self-Coaching, Teaching Tales for the 16 Personality Types, Decode Your Personality: Go Beyond Myers-Briggs With 64 Brain-Based Subtypes,An Introduction to the Personality Type Code, Quick Guide to 16 Personality Types in Organizations, 16 Personality Types: Descriptions for Self-Discovery, Multiple Intelligences and Personality Type, and Character and Personality Type. The 16 Personality Types: Descriptions is based on extensive interviews with real people and remains a best-seller even after twenty years. These titles appear on Amazon and at www.RadianceHouse.com. Moreover, he created the Interstrength Cognitive Assessment (www.Keys2Cognition.com), which profiles a person's use of the 8 Jungian mental functions; the NPI at CareerPlanner (www.careerplanner.com/Shop/NPI-FacilitatorReports.cfm), which offers 3 personality type options after an interactive experience with several personality models; and finally, the NeuroPQ (www.NeuroPQ.com), which profiles a person's use of various cognitive skills by brain region, showing how a person has uniquely developed his or her type.
Dario has also authored self-help software tools including "Personality Types" and "Love Therapy" for the Apple iPhone / iPad. For details, visit www.PersonalityApps.com and www.LoveTherapyApps.com.
Dario also works with MatrixInsights to bring organizations and consultants an online leadership dashboard that includes video-based assessment, training, and team-building. For details, see www.MatrixInsights.com.
In 2009, Dario acted as the conference chair for the International Association of Psychological Type's (www.aptinternational.org) biennial conference in Dallas, Texas. He regularly acts as a keynote speaker and webinar and workshop presenter for regional, national and international organizations such as Google Inc., Providence Tarzana Medical Center, CPP-Asia Pacific, Attentional Ltd, and Danish Center for Leadership, among others. In September 2014, he presented along with Roger Hamilton and other entrepreneurial luminaries at The Global Trust Conference (www.thetrustconference.com).
Dario takes a systems approach to personality. This includes the use of multiple complementary models to triangulate a person's best-fit personality type. By "type", he means a sustainable pattern of activity, or in mathematical terms, a strange attractor within a living dynamic system (after all, persons are implemented as dynamic systems, not as statistical ones).
Finally, in partnership with his mom, Laura Power, MS, PhD, LDN, Dario helps present the results of her extensive research on body types, food allergies, and other body- and health-related issues. See www.BioType.net for details.
Shamanic Practices
In 2014, Dario began exploring shamanism, body-mind practices like yoga, and altered states of consciousness. He has presented at UCLA on brain imaging results of people engaged in meditation and entheogenic trance states. Along the way, he has also tied his work to Jungian psychology. His studies culminated in two popular books: Jung on Yoga: Insights and Activities to Awaken with the Chakras and Facets of Ayahuasca: A Guide to Journeys of Healing, Insight, and Growth.
Dario has also completed basic shamanic training at the Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies in the "Northern Tradition" of the Nordic peoples of Europe (Vikings). He facilitates individual and group journeys and speaks on the topic of shamanism in this tradition.
Games & Fiction
Dario has been involved in tabletop role-playing games since 1982. He is author of 6 well-received hardcover game books including Secrets of Pact Magic, Villains of Pact Magic, and Grimoire of Lost Souls (with Alex Augunas) for the popular d20 System. Pact magic is based on real 16th-century practices developed and conducted by alchemists, monks, and similar folk. The game is chock full of legends, diagrams, and character options, and provides an eerie gothic atmosphere.More into technology? Dario is also the author of Radiance Players Guide, Radiance Masters Guide, and Radiance Expansion Kit as a standard-alone game for adventures in Tesla's gilded age of electrotech. You can run adventures from 1850 to 1950 in an alternate-Earth where magic and monsters lurk in the shadows of city lights. For fans who prefer Pathfinder RPG, Dario is also coauthor with Alex Augunas of Age of Electrotech, a port to Paizo's popular game system.
For use with these books, Dario offers Butcher of Braggarton: A Mid-Level Adventure, which offers everything you need to run a mystery-horror adventure with electrotech and pact magic, for use with any d20 System game.
You can find the books here: DriveThruRPG, RadianceRPG.com, Facebook.com/RadianceRPG, PactMagic.com, and paizo.com/products/btpy8tyw.
Dario has also authored Love's Tapestry: A Book of Lost Souls, an anthology of fantasy short-shorts, and the first two books (in a planned series) of interactive novellas: Night Journey of the Soul and Echoes in the Stream of Time with book 3, You Are The Monster on its way in late 2023. If you like 1930s horror with dashes of mystery, romance, and psychology, then this series is for you. Owing to a unique design, you can read these as linear novellas or play them as choose-your-own-adventure style. Yes, it's possible!
Educational Background
Dario did his doctorate work in Systems Science (1995-1998) at the State University of New York (www.binghamton.edu/ssie/) and gained his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering (1988-1992) from the University of Southern California (http://ame-www.usc.edu/), where he enjoyed USC's Academic Scholarship for Excellence, a full-tuition undergraduate scholarship.His educational background also includes East Asian languages and cultures and creative writing. Dario began studying Japanese as a high school freshman in 1984. In 1987, he acted as the student representative to greet the then-Crown Prince (now retired Emperor) of Japan in his trip to Washington D.C. Later, in 1989-1990, Dario attended Waseda University in Tokyo for his college sophomore year where he took courses in both English and Japanese.
As part of his dissertation work, Dario created SOCIALBOT, an animated interactive character that uses everyday English to share socially-relevant information. The informing approach to design was "social situated action" where intelligence involves coordination between agents. Socialbot is detailed here www.Socialbot-app.com and here www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfwa-ScdizI.
Hobbies
Dario is a fan of the Burning Man annual festival held in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. He attended every year from 2007 to 2012 and looks forward to returning. For more information: www.BurningMan.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man.
For relaxation, Dario enjoys the beach, playing guitar, kundalini yoga, hiking and surfing as well as speculative films and other media.
Formative Years
Dario was born in Los Angeles. At age 5 he moved to Acra Beach in Barbados. From 11 to 18, for the most part, he lived in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C., and graduated Walt Whitman High School with honors and an all-expense paid trip to Japan in the summer of 1988, sponsored by the Japan-America Society via their Japan-American Society Summer Fellowship in Japan, in the spirit of promoting peace and cross-cultural understanding.Last updated 28th of July 2023. Copyright Dario Nardi, 2015, 2023.