A college savings account in a child’s name not only gives parents hope for the future, it also results in improved social-emotional health for their children. That’s the result of a new study from Washington University's Center for Social Development released Jan. 27 online in JAMA Pediatrics.
A new Boston University study led by postdoctoral fellow Natalie Emmons and published in the January 16, 2014 online edition of Child Development suggests that our bias toward immortality is a part of human intuition that naturally emerges early in life.
A University of Toronto report based on two neural imaging studies that monitored brain activity has found individuals are more satisfied to get a reward from telling the truth rather than getting the same reward through deceit. These studies were published recently in the neuroscience journals Neuropsychologia and NeuroImage.
A new study from the University of Toronto Scarborough shows that while people have a harder time controlling themselves when tired, it doesn’t mean they’ve exhausted all of their willpower. The key to boosting self-control is finding pleasure in the necessary activities of life.
Psychology researchers find parents set themselves up for speech errors when they give their children similar-sounding names.
Caffeine is the energy boost of choice for millions. Now, however, researchers have found another use for the stimulant: memory enhancer.
Why do animals ranging from fruit flies to humans all need to sleep? After all, sleep disconnects them from their environment, puts them at risk and keeps them from seeking food or mates for large parts of the day.
Even before babies have language skills or much information about social structures, they can infer whether other people are likely to be friends by observing their likes and dislikes, a new study on infant cognition has found.
Common advice to new parents is that the more words babies hear the faster their vocabulary grows. Now new findings show that what spurs early language development isn't so much the quantity of words as the style of speech and social context in which speech occurs.
Even scientists are fond of thinking of the human brain as a computer, following sets of rules to communicate, make decisions and find a meal. But if the brain is like a computer, why do brains make mistakes that computers don’t?
A new study by Wellesley College neuroscientists is the first to directly compare brain responses to faces and objects with responses to colors. The paper reveals new information about how the brain’s inferior temporal (IT) cortex processes information.
Poverty may have direct implications for important, early steps in the development of the brain, saddling children of low-income families with slower rates of growth in two key brain structures, according to researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
New research suggests that even in the absence of a concussion, blows to the head during a single season of football or ice hockey may affect the brain’s white matter and cognition, or memory and thinking abilities. The study is published in the December 11, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. White matter is brain tissue that plays an important role in the speed of nerve signals.
A recent Mayo Clinic study found that people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are about twice as likely to develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI) -- and chances are that it will include memory loss. The study was recently published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
A psychological study has found that skilled typists can’t identify the positions of many of the keys on the QWERTY keyboard and probably didn’t memorize them even when they first learned to type.
A new study led by University of Kentucky researchers suggests that a diet low in vitamin D causes damage to the brain.
Parents, let your children get messy in the high chair: They learn better that way. That's according to a new study from the University of Iowa, which concludes that a 16-month-old's setting and degree of interaction enhances his or her ability to identify nonsolid objects and name them. Results published in the journal Developmental Science.
Grammar and syntax have been thought for decades to be automatic and untouchable by other brain processes and that everything else — the sex of the speaker, their dialect, etc. — is stripped away as our brains process the sound signal of a word and store it as an abstract form. A University of Kansas study suggests that even higher-level processes – in this case – grammar - are affected by information about the speaker.
A new blood biomarker correctly predicted which concussion victims went on to have white matter tract structural damage and persistent cognitive dysfunction following a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). If validated in larger studies, this blood test could identify concussion patients at increased risk for persistent cognitive dysfunction or further brain damage and disability if returning to sports or military activities.
Research in recent years has suggested that young Americans might be less creative now than in decades past, even while their intelligence — as measured by IQ tests — continues to rise. But new research from the University of Washington Information School and Harvard University, closely studying 20 years of student creative writing and visual artworks, hints that the dynamics of creativity may not break down as simply as that. Instead, it may be that some aspects of creativity — such as those employed in visual arts — are gently rising over the years, while other aspects, such as the nuances of creative writing, could be declining.
Language acquisition has traditionally been considered a social, interactive process, however new research from Boston University College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College reveals that toddlers are able to acquire the meanings of words even in “socially impoverished contexts” where social or visual information is absent.
As little as 20 minutes of moderate exercise three times per week during pregnancy enhances the newborn child’s brain development, according to researchers at the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine children’s hospital. This head-start could have an impact on the child's entire life.
Psychology and neurobiology researchers develop new brain imaging model to examine how memories are used in decision making.
With the help of computerized eye trackers, a new cognitive science study finds that at least 50 percent of people can see the movement of their own hand even in the absence of all light.
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery for adults, but for babies it's their foremost tool for learning. Now researchers from the University of Washington and Temple University have found the first evidence revealing a key aspect of the brain processing that occurs in babies to allow this learning by observation.
Children are more apt to believe a nice, non-expert than a mean expert according to researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas. In the study published in Developmental Science, the authors examine how preschoolers decide whom to believe when provided with two conflicting pieces of information given by a nice or mean adult.
Light enhances brain activity during a cognitive task even in some people who are totally blind, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Montreal and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The findings contribute to scientists’ understanding of everyone’s brains, as they also revealed how quickly light impacts on cognition.
Can complex thinking stave off the effects of aging? A new study from the University of Texas at Dallas shows that learning new, mentally challenging tasks, such as digital photography, improves memory in seniors, while less demanding tasks, such as socializing or playing simple games, does not.
Long-term memory loss, difficulty understanding verbal or written communication or impaired ability to pay attention may still occur five years after heart surgery if a patient has a certain gene variation, according to a study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY™ 2013 annual meeting. This gene was found to be related to a decline in cognitive capabilities compared to those who do not have the variation.
Brain training games, apps, and websites are popular and it’s not hard to see why – who wouldn’t want to give their mental abilities a boost? New research suggests that brain training programs might strengthen your ability to hold information in mind, but they won’t bring any benefits to the kind of intelligence that helps you reason and solve problems.
The left and right hemispheres of Albert Einstein’s brain were unusually well connected to each other and may have contributed to his brilliance.
New psychology research shows how genes can be stimulated or suppressed depending on the child's environment and could help bridge the achievement gap between rich and poor students.
Researchers have found that the skeleton, acting through the bone-derived hormone osteocalcin, exerts a powerful influence on prenatal brain development and cognitive functions such as learning, memory, anxiety, and depression in adult mice. Findings from the mouse study could lead to new approaches to the prevention and treatment of neurologic disorders. The study was published today in the online edition of Cell.
A recent critical literature review conducted by Ana Inés Ansaldo and Ladan Ghazi Saidi -Ph.D student- points to three interventional avenues to promote cross-linguistic effects of language therapy (the natural transfer effects that relearning one language has on the other language).
A new study provides evidence that one important part of memory undergoes substantial development even after the age of 7.
New UT-Austin psychology study shows even preschool children are quick to conform to ritualistic behavior while learning.
Getting kids to share their toys is a never-ending battle, and compelling them to do so never seems to help. New research suggests that allowing children to make a choice to sacrifice their own toys in order to share with someone else makes them share more in the future. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
New research from Washington University in St. Louis sheds light on the brain mechanisms that underlie a type of memory, known as prospective memory, revealing two distinct processes that support our ability to remember to remember.
A University of Virginia study using brain scans has found that people experience risk to friends in the same way they feel risk to themselves.
While the effect of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs) in infant formula on children's cognitive development may not always be evident on standardized developmental tasks at 18 months, significant effects may emerge later on more specific or fine-grained tasks.
It's been a long-held belief by many that singing in a foreign language can help you learn that language. A new study provides the first scientific evidence to affirm that claim. The finding is particularly relevant as internationalization increases and the importance and necessity of learning a second language grows.
Using direct human brain recordings, a research team from Drexel University, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA and Thomas Jefferson University has identified a new type of cell in the brain that helps people to keep track of their relative location while navigating an unfamiliar environment.
By activating a subset of brain cells in mice, researchers changed the way the animals remembered a particular setting. To determine if they could alter the way a mouse remembered a setting by activating neurons associated with it, researchers attempted to change whether or not a mouse was afraid of a particular cage. Their experiements implicated neurons in the brain's dentate gyrus as being responsible for inducing the animal's false memory of their cage.
A team of neuroscientists has identified a protein in laboratory mice linked to impairments similar to those afflicted with Angelman syndrome—a condition associated with symptoms that include autism, intellectual disability, and motor abnormalities.
The larva of the fruit fly is helping scientists understand the way humans learn information from each other. Fruit flies have long served as models for studying behaviour, but new findings show their larvae may be even more valuable.
The “Love Hormone” Oxytocin, improves men’s ability to identify competitive relationships whereas in women it facilitates the ability to identify kinship, according to a recent study. “These findings coincide with the theory that claims the social-behavioral differences between men and women are caused by a combination of cultural as well as biological factors”, concluded Prof. Simone Shamay-Tsoory who led the research
A new Florida State University study has found that adolescent boys who are hurt in just two physical fights suffer a loss in IQ that is roughly equivalent to missing an entire year of school. Girls experience a similar loss of IQ after only a single fighting-related injury.
Less contact during practice could mean a lot less exposure to head injuries for young football players, according to researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and Virginia Tech.
Artificial and natural knowledge researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago IQ-tested one of the best available artificial intelligence systems and learned that it’s about as smart as the average 4-year-old.
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation will honor seven young mental health researchers for their exceptional research on Fri. July 26, 2013 at the Annual Klerman and Freedman Awards, and present an online briefing for media about the honorees’ latest cutting-edge research on July 23, 2013.
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