Feature Channels: Cognition and Learning

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Stephen V. Faraone, PhD, Distinguished Professor at Upstate and a leading researcher on ADHD, has been elected president of the World Federation of ADHD.

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Results of a pilot study conducted by researchers from the National University of Singapore provided evidence that an artificial intelligence known as CURATE.AI has the potential to enhance learning, and could pave the way for promising applications in personalised digital therapy, including the prevention of cognitive decline.

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A team of NIH-funded researchers at Stanford University Medical School has found that children with autism improved measurably on a test of socialization and learning when their therapy included an at-home intervention with Google Glass. The smart system of eye wear and mobile-phone-based games helped the children with autism understand emotions conveyed in facial expressions.

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Conversation is an important part of what makes us human. Previous research has shown that children begin to develop this skill at a young age. While many assume that mothers instigate communication with their children, new research suggests that children are the ones who get the conversation started. “I was surprised that kids were drivers of conversation,” said Mark VanDam, who will present his team’s research findings at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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The different soundscapes of NICUs has recently attracted interest in how changes in what we hear in our earliest days might affect language development in the brain. One ongoing study is hoping to better understand these differences by painting a clearer picture of what kinds of sounds full-term infants are exposed to in the womb. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are conducting one of the first studies on how often full-term fetuses hear spoken language before birth. They will present their preliminary findings at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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Rewards are necessary for learning, but may actually mask true knowledge, finds a new Johns Hopkins University study with rodents and ferrets.

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Children glean all kinds of information from the people around them. In particular, children mimic and learn speech patterns from their family. Previous work has shown that infants attend selectively to their mother’s voice over another female’s voice. But new research suggests that children learn new words best from other children. Yuanyuan Wang will present research findings from a collaborative work with Amanda Seidl from Purdue University at the 177th ASA Meeting, May 13-17.

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The general public largely views the use of cognitive enhancers such as Adderall as an acceptable practice when used by adults in the workplace, suggests a new study from Penn Medicine neurologists, which published this week in AJOB Neuroscience.

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Neurobiologists have located the brain area responsible for value decisions. Data from thousands of neurons revealed an area of the brain called the retrosplenial cortex, previously not known for “value-based decision-making,” a behavior that is impaired in a range of neurological conditions.

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When it comes to learning a language, the left side of the brain has traditionally been considered the hub of language processing. But new research from the University of Delaware shows the right brain plays a critical early role in helping learners identify the basic sounds associated with a language. That could help find new teaching methods to better improve student success in picking up a foreign language.

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Leonardo Da Vinci's spelling problems may have aided his artistic genius.

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A study of 70 mothers and their infants suggests that the impact of maternal stress on neurodevelopment is detectable by electroencephalography (EEG) at 2 months of age.

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The loss of memory and cognitive function known to afflict survivors of septic shock is the result of a sugar that is released into the blood stream and enters the brain during the life-threatening condition.

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Research from the University of Washington uses functional MRI to identify two differences in the brains of blind individuals -- differences that might be responsible for their abilities to make better use of auditory information.

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Smokers who are trying to quit may not always have to reach for a piece of nicotine gum to stave off a craving. Deliberately inhaling a pleasant aroma may be enough to reduce the urge to light up, at least temporarily, and could be used as part of an effective smoking cessation strategy, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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Imagine a future technology that would provide instant access to the world's knowledge and artificial intelligence, simply by thinking about a specific topic or question. Communications, education, work, and the world as we know it would be transformed.

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Teenagers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may benefit from more sleep to help them focus, plan and control their emotions. The findings—the first of their kind in young people with ADHD—will be presented today at the American Physiological Society’s (APS) annual meeting at Experimental Biology 2019 in Orlando, Fla.

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Western Illinois University Department of Computer Sciences Associate Professor Justin Ehrlich received funding for the development of a virtual reality (VR) program designed to improve social competencies for students with high functioning autism and learning disabilities.

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Young children whose parents read them five books a day enter kindergarten having heard about 1.4 million more words than kids who were never read to, a new study found.

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Alterations in functional connectivity of the brain may help in understanding the neurobiological changes leading to somatic symptom disorder (SSD), reports a study in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published in the Lippincott Portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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Children born into poverty show key differences in early brain function - according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

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Learning one's native language may seem effortless. One minute, we're babbling babies. The next we're in school reciting Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech or Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice."

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Musical training produces lasting improvements to a cognitive mechanism that helps individuals be more attentive and less likely to be distracted by irrelevant stimuli while performing demanding tasks.

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In a recent learning study they were able to show that new conceptual information is stored along spatial dimensions in form of a mental map located in the hippocampus. Together with colleagues from the Donders Institute at Radboud University in Nijmegen, they observed brain activity patterns that support the idea that the neural mechanisms that support navigation in physical space might also be involved in conceptual learning.

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Traditional print books may have an edge over e-books when it comes to quality time shared between parents and their children, a new study suggests.

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Adult depression has long been associated with shrinkage of the hippocampus, a brain region that plays an important role in memory and response to stress. Now, new research from Washington University in St. Louis has linked participation in team sports to larger hippocampal volumes in children and less depression in boys ages 9 to 11.

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Prof. Noam Sobel's team at the Weizmann Institute of Science has shown that we do better on tests when we inhale at the same time we’re presented with a problem. The findings shed light on the evolution of the brain, and may lead to ways of helping people who have attention and learning disorders improve their skills.

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Researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine used MRI brain scans and machine learning techniques at birth to predict cognitive development at age 2 years with 95 percent accuracy.

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Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a new method of statistical analysis, researchers have discovered the taste center in the human brain by uncovering which parts of the brain distinguish different types of tastes.

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Whether it’s probing a child’s understanding of a topic through questions or engaging in hands-on activities alongside them, parents can guide their children to learn in new ways through simple directions, according to a study by psychology researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

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A five-year follow-up systematic review and meta-analysis of 33 studies—conducted to determine changes in the frequency of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis since the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 (DSM-5)—was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

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Scientists continue to find evidence linking Type 2 diabetes with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia and the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. However, little is understood about the mechanism by which the two are connected.Now, researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, have demonstrated that impaired insulin signaling in the brain negatively affects cognition, mood and metabolism, all components of Alzheimer’s Disease.

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Testing an accepted belief knowing it can be disproved at any time is the foundation of science and scientific discovery. The process relies on people being curious; exploring deeply by asking challenging, even probing questions in order to find answers.

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Infants as young as five months can differentiate laughter between friends and that between strangers, finds a new study. The results suggest that the ability to detect the nature of social relationships is instilled early in human infancy, possibly the result of a detection system that uses vocal cues.

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A new review explores the different areas of the brain that process the meaning of concrete and abstract concepts. The article is published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurophysiology (JNP).

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The popular view that music enhances creativity has been challenged by researchers who say it has the opposite effect.

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Young children see national identity, in part, as biological in nature, a perception that diminishes as they get older, finds a new study by psychology researchers. But despite changes in views of nationality as we age, the work suggests the intriguing possibility that the roots of nationalist sentiments are established early in life.

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I’ve always thought of parenting as a team sport. It works better when we can support each other, learn from each other, and understand that we’re not alone. That’s what The Parent Pep Talk podcast is all about, which you can download today on iTunes or your podcast app.

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Irvine, Calif., Feb. 12, 2019 — The University of California, Irvine has received a five-year, $5 million Institute of Education Sciences grant from the U.S. Department of Education to establish the first national research and development center focused on improving the writing skills of middle and high school students. The Writing Research to Improve Teaching and Evaluation Center for Secondary Students will conduct a study on academic writing in English language arts, science and history – in collaboration with researchers and subjects from the nearby Tustin Unified School District – and then create a professional development intervention program for teachers.

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The grandchildren of adolescent mothers have lower school readiness scores than their peers, according to a study published February 6, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Elizabeth Wall-Wieler of Stanford University, USA, and colleagues at the University of Manitoba.

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Newborn babies are born with the innate skills needed to pick out words from language, a new study published in Developmental Science reveals.

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Immersive virtual reality (VR) can be remarkably lifelike, but new UBC research has found a yawning gap between how people respond psychologically in VR and how they respond in real life.

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Early adult general cognitive ability is a stronger predictor of cognitive function and reserve later in life than other factors, such as higher education, occupational complexity or engaging in late-life intellectual activities.

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Researchers at Rush University Medical Center and the MIND Institute at UC Davis have found that mavoglurant, an experimental drug known as an mGluR5 negative modulator, can positively modify a key characteristic behavior in individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS).

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Researchers at MIND Institute at UC Davis and Rush University Medical Center have found that mavoglurant, an experimental drug known as an mGluR5 negative modulator, can positively modify a key characteristic behavior in individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS).

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A University at Buffalo psychologist has published a neuroimaging study that could help develop tests for early identification of dyslexia.

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Emergency and urgent hospitalizations are associated with an increased rate of cognitive decline in older adults, report researchers at Rush University Medical Center. Results of their study, published in the Jan. 11, 2019, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, shows that hospitalization may be a more of a major risk factor for long-term cognitive decline in older adults than previously recognized.

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Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Siddhartan Govindasamy, together with colleagues from JK Lakshmipat University (JKLU) in Jaipur, India, is running an innovative workshop focused on experiential and project-based learning.

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Studies: Elevated blood lead level in early childhood associated with increased risk of academic problems in school-aged children

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Seaver Autism Center study results contribute to understanding of patterns of cognitive functioning in adults with autism and highlight the importance of a broader approach when studying cognition