Feature Channels: Cognition and Learning

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Susan E. Levy, MD, MPH, director of the Regional Autism Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is this year’s recipient of the Arnold J. Capute Award, given by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The award was presented to her today at the AAP conference in Chicago. The Arnold J. Capute Award is presented each year to an AAP member for outstanding contributions in the field of children with disabilities.

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An international team of researchers reports that when children are praised for being smart not only are they quicker to give up in the face of obstacles they are also more likely to be dishonest and cheat. Kids as young as age 3 appear to behave differently when told “You are so smart” vs “You did very well this time.”

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Feeling the pain of failure leads to more effort to correct your mistake than simply thinking about what went wrong, according to a new study.

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The Science of Consciousness (‘TSC’) is an interdisciplinary conference emphasizing broad and rigorous approaches to all aspects of the study and understanding of conscious awareness. Topical areas include neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, biology, quantum physics, meditation, altered states, machine consciousness, the nature of reality, culture and experiential phenomenology.

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If a former classmate walks by you on the street and looks you in the face without saying so much as “hello,” don’t be dismayed. Same for a person you met at a party the night before.

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Penn-CHOP Researchers Found that Students Who Took a Course in Art Observation Significantly Improved Clinical Observation and Professional Development Skills

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The bending of a hook into wire to fish for the handle of a basket by the crow Betty 15 years ago stunned the scientific world. However, the finding was recently relegated as similar behavioural routines were discovered in the natural repertoire of the same species, suggesting the possibility that Betty’s tool manufacture was less intelligent than previously believed. Now cognitive biologists from the University of Vienna and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna studied tool making in an Indonesian cockatoo. Other than the New Caledonian crows Goffin cockatoos are not using tools in the wild. To the researchers' surprise the birds manufactured hook tools out of straight wire (and in a second task unbent curved wire to make a straight tool) without ever having seen or used a hook tool before.

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Anesthetic gases selectively block consciousness, sparing non-conscious brain activities. Thus the specific mechanism of anesthetic action could reveal how the brain produces consciousness.

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Each fall, parents pack their college freshmen off to school, fingers crossed for a solid start on the road to adulthood. But some students don’t find their footing and return home after a semester or two to regroup.

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Research by Brittany Solomon found that, regardless of how people personally view another person, they also are aware of how that person sees themselves, as well as how they are generally perceived by others.

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Mount Sinai Research Finds That When Making Decisions, Monkeys Use Different Brain Areas to Weigh Value and Availability

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Research on the neurobiology of bilingualism has suggested that switching languages is inherently effortful, requiring executive control to manage cognitive functions, but a new study shows this is only the case when speakers are prompted, or forced, to do so.

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The findings from the NIH-funded study will have implications on targeted interventions and policy changes in distracted driving.

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Children whose parents provide them with learning materials like books and toys and engage them in learning activities and meaningful conversations in infancy and toddlerhood are likely to develop early cognitive skills that can cascade into later academic success, finds a new study by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

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In a study looking at brain scans of people with mild loss of thought and memory ability, Johns Hopkins researchers report evidence of lower levels of the serotonin transporter — a natural brain chemical that regulates mood, sleep and appetite.

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Cognitive hearing aids that constantly monitor brain activity to determine whether a subject is conversing with a specific speaker would be very useful for the hearing impaired. Using deep neural network models, Columbia Engineering researchers have made a breakthrough in auditory attention decoding methods and are coming closer to making cognitively controlled hearing aids a reality. The study, led by Electrical Engineering Professor Nima Mesgarani, is published today in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

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Matthew S. Kayser, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Penn Medicine, has been awarded a 2017 Clinical Scientist Development Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF).

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Older adults who consume alcohol moderately on a regular basis are more likely to live to the age of 85 without dementia or other cognitive impairments than non-drinkers, according to a University of California San Diego School of Medicine-led study.

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Drinking alcohol results in an alcohol use disorder (AUD) when consumption becomes excessive and dependence develops. Both stress and anxiety can contribute to the development of an AUD. Chronic stress can increase drinking, and chronic drinking can elevate anxiety and dysregulate normal responses to stressors. Behavioral flexibility and adaptive behavior – essential for controlling excessive drinking – are core functions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), This study used mice to examine the effects of combined alcohol and stress exposure on PFC function.

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The push to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s disease has yielded a greater understanding of the disease, but has failed to generate successful new drugs. To blame are the many undefined subtypes of mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. But if scientists grouped people with similar types of cognitive impairment, they could more precisely test the impact of investigational drugs, according to findings in a July 28 article in the journal Scientific Reports, a publication of Nature Research.

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A brain penetrant drug — a small-molecule mimetic of BDNF, or brain derived neurotrophic factor — is able to improve brain performance in Rett syndrome mice — specifically synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus and object location memory. The hippocampus is involved in learning and memory.

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University of Washington researchers have found that the trait of social dominance, and the dynamics surrounding it, may be so naturally ingrained that toddlers as young as 17 months old not only can perceive who is dominant, but also anticipate that the dominant person will receive more rewards.

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A Cornell University study suggests that social feedback from other birds plays a crucial role in how baby birds – and human babies – learn to communicate.

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Behind the chubby cheeks and bright eyes of babies as young as 8 months lies the smoothly whirring mind of a social statistician, logging our every move and making odds on what a person is most likely to do next, suggests new research in the journal Infancy.

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New research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that children as young as 3 already are beginning to recognize and follow important rules and patterns governing how letters in the English language fit together to make words

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People with higher cognitive abilities are more likely to learn and apply social stereotypes, finds a new study. The results, stemming from a series of experiments, show that those with higher cognitive abilities also more easily unlearn stereotypes when presented with new information.

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People who carry a genetic susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease appear to be at greater risk of diminished cognition from sleep-disordered breathing than those without the susceptibility, according to new research published online, ahead of print in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

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People who take care of their heart health in young adulthood may have larger brains in middle-age, compared to people who do not take care of their heart health, according to a study published in the July 19, 2017, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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How short-term memories become long-term ones has frequently been explored by researchers. While a definitive answer remains elusive, NYU scientists Thomas Carew and Nikolay Kukushkin conclude that this transformation is best explained by a “temporal hierarchy” of “time windows” that collectively alter the state of the brain.

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At a glance: ·Newly published research reveals the presence of a blueprint for the complex visual system already present at birth. ·The observations shed light on a long-standing mystery about how and when certain cardinal features of the visual system develop. ·The findings have implications for human brain evolution and could provide explanation for some anomalies in visual activity seen in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.

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New Research from Wellesley College and the University of Kansas Shows People Observe the Body Differently When Assessing Friends vs. Mates

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Around one third of fake images went undetected in a recent study by the University of Warwick, UK.

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A new study by the University of Washington, published July 17 in Mind, Brain, and Education, is among the first to investigate how babies can learn a second language outside of the home. The researchers sought to answer a fundamental question: Can babies be taught a second language if they don’t get foreign language exposure at home, and if so, what kind of foreign language exposure, and how much, is needed to spark that learning?

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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. The results of their study suggest 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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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most frequently used psychological intervention for people with chronic pain, and new approaches for improving CBT outcomes may be found in the psychological flexibility model and Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT), according to research reported in The Journal of Pain, published by the American Pain Society, www.americanpainsociety.org.

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A recent study at the University of Pennsylvania found that, not only did commercial brain training with Lumosity™ have no effect on decision-making, it also had no effect on cognitive function beyond practice effects on the training tasks.

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Researchers have identified a rare genetic syndrome characterized by intellectual disability, seizures, an abnormal gait and distinctive facial features. The scientists pinpointed variants in the WDR26 gene as causes for this distinctive, yet unnamed condition. Their early research provides initial information for counseling patients and families coping with uncertainties for children with the rare, poorly recognized condition.

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A new research article proposes that more attention be given to what’s right with children who grow up in high-stress environments so their unique strengths and abilities can be used to more effectively tailor education, jobs and interventions to fit them. Stress-adapted children and youth possess traits — such as heightened vigilance, attention shifting and empathic accuracy — that aren’t tapped in traditional learning and testing situations. In addition, these skills may actually allow at-risk children to perform better than their peers from low-risk backgrounds when faced with uncertainty and stress.

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Watching television sometimes gets a bad rap––especially where children and screen time are concerned––but not all of it's deserved.

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Researchers have identified gut microbiota that interact with brain regions associated with mood and behavior. This may be the first time that behavioral and neurobiological differences associated with microbial composition in healthy humans have been identified.

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Latest research highlights from ACSM

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New study shows your cognitive capacity is significantly reduced when your smartphone is within reach — even if it’s off.

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A late bedtime is associated with lower perceived control of obsessive thoughts, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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A four-year study conducted by researchers from the National University of Singapore showed that a combination of nutritional, physical and cognitive interventions can reverse physical frailty in elderly people.

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Memories that stick with us for a lifetime are those that fit in with a lot of other things we remember – but have a slightly weird twist. It’s this notion of ‘peculiarity’ that can help us understand what makes lasting memories.

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Parents of prematurely born babies often fear their children may go on to struggle in school, but findings from a new large-scale study from the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University and Northwestern Medicine should reassure parents.

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Kinesthetic classrooms are not new, but the URI project is breaking new ground by measuring language patterns and usage in the context of movement. No other school is studying a kinesthetic classroom in a controlled manner, and no other school is looking at connections between movement, language and being on task, the researchers said.

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It has been difficult to tell whether neural entrainment is specialized for spoken language. In a new study, University of Chicago scholars designed an experiment using sign language to answer that question.

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The first ever longitudinal study of U.S. Chinese older adults in the greater Chicago area found the cognitive and physical function of U.S. Chinese immigrants may be greatly impacted by their social and cultural context more than non-immigrant populations.

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Repeated exposure to a common anesthesia drug early in life results in visual recognition memory impairment, which emerges after the first year of life and may persist long-term, according to a study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online May 31 in The British Journal of Anaesthesia.