Feature Channels: Cognition and Learning

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New research from the University of Guelph on the brain and memory could help in developing therapies for people with schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

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John Tracy Clinic (JTC), a non-profit diagnostic and education center for young children with hearing loss, announced today the launch of their new “Parent Toddler Discovery Program.” Taking place from July 10 – 15, 2016, the new program will be available as part of this year’s JTC Summer Sessions schedule.

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A new study indicates that children with Down syndrome who have motor speech deficits have been inadequately diagnosed, which could have a major impact on the interventions used by speech pathologists when treating patients.

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The effect of aging on cognitive processes such as learning, memory and logical reasoning have so far been studied almost exclusively in people. Using a series of touchscreen tests, Lisa Wallis and Friederike Range of the Messerli Research Institute at Vetmeduni Vienna have now studied these domains in pet dogs of varying ages.

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When babies and toddlers play with a tablet or other noisy device, they often play alone, which can be detrimental to their development, according to Bradford Wiles, an assistant professor and extension early child development specialist at Kansas State University. Research has shown that children need meaningful interaction with adults to reach their full social potential.

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As brain cells age they lose the fibers that receive neural impulses, a change that may underlie cognitive decline. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine recently found a way to reverse this process in rats. The study was published February 3 in The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers caution that more studies are needed, but the findings shed light on the mechanisms of cognitive decline and identify potential strategies to stem it.

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Why do humans and dolphins evolve large brains relative to the size of their bodies while blue whales and hippos have brains that are relatively puny? While there has been much speculation regarding brain size and intelligence, a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirms that species with brains that are large relative to their body are more intelligent.

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When practicing and learning a new skill, making slight changes during repeat practice sessions may help people master the skill faster than practicing the task in precisely the same way, Johns Hopkins researchers report.

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New research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine suggests that prenatal exposure to flame retardants and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) commonly found in the environment may have a lasting effect on a child’s cognitive and behavioral development, known as executive function.

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Taking more time to make decisions after a mistake arises from a mixture of adaptive neural mechanisms that improve the accuracy and maladaptive mechanisms that reduce it, neuroscientists at New York University have found. Their study also potentially offer insights into afflictions that impair judgments, such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

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Individuals who participated in high challenge activities like quilting and photography showed enhanced brain activity, according to a new Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience report.

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A team of researchers has discovered that differences in the types of memories we have influence the nature of our future encounters. Their findings show how distinct parts of the brain, underlying different kinds of memories, also influence our attention in new situations.

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Do students think best when on their feet? A new study by the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health indicates they do. Findings published recently in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health provide the first evidence of neurocognitive benefits of stand-height desks in classrooms, where students are given the choice to stand or sit based on their preferences.

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Brain scans show that stories that force us to think about our deepest values activate a region of the brain once thought to be its autopilot.

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A new University of Iowa study finds babies make more speech-like sounds during reading than when playing with puppets or toys—and mothers are more responsive to these types of sounds while reading to their child than during the other activities.

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The act of handling money makes young children work harder and give less, according to new research published by the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and University of Illinois at Chicago. The effect was observed in children who lacked concrete knowledge of money's purpose, and persisted despite the denomination of the money.

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Research published in the Journal of Neuroscience has shown that retrieving memories of events from our past may take place quicker than we previously thought – and it is possible to interfere with that process.

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Mothers, put down your smartphones when caring for your babies! That’s the message from University of California, Irvine researchers, who have found that fragmented and chaotic maternal care can disrupt proper brain development, which can lead to emotional disorders later in life.

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Researchers at New Mexico State University are mimicking high-stakes visual search scenarios in the lab to gauge performances of independent searchers and search pairs. Preliminary research showed that two heads might not always be better than one.

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The workings of neural circuits associated with creativity are significantly altered when artists are actively attempting to express emotions, according to a new brain-scanning study of jazz pianists.

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New findings by French researchers show that the brain devotes more processing resources to social situations that signal threat than those that are benign.

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Did you receive affection, play freely and feel supported in childhood? Childhood experiences like these appear to have a lot to do with well-being and moral capacities in adulthood, according to University of Notre Dame researchers.

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A new study by University of Guelph researchers that narrows down where and how estrogens affect the brain may help in understanding how the hormones affect cognition and memory in women. The team found that adding the hormone to female mouse brains helps boost short-term learning, likely through a “use-it-or-lose-it” process.

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Our vision and hearing aren't as reliable as we might think, according to a study by life scientists at UCLA.

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Playing three-dimensional video games – besides being lots of fun – can boost the formation of memories, according to University of California, Irvine neurobiologists. Along with adding to the trove of research that shows these games can improve eye-hand coordination and reaction time, this finding shows the potential for novel virtual approaches to helping people who lose memory as they age or suffer from dementia.

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People are less willing to rely on their knowledge and say they know something when they have access to the Internet, suggesting that our connection to the web is affecting how we think.

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The article has been published in the journal Ethology, Ecology and Evolution, with a title the researcher Roberto Cazzolla Gatti borrowed from the novel by Lewis Carroll: "Self-consciousness: beyond the looking-glass and what dogs found there."

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Distractions while driving can come from visual, physical, and cognitive sources. A special section of the December 2015 Human Factors presents a framework for measuring cognitive distraction, followed by expert commentaries that suggest a way forward for reducing crash risk.

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University of Washington researchers have reconstructed 3-D models of celebrities such as Tom Hanks from large Internet photo collections. The models can deliver speeches that the real actor never performed - one step toward developing fully interactive digital models of people from family or historic photo collections.

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You may believe that you have forgotten the Chinese you spoke as a child, but your brain hasn’t. Moreover, that “forgotten” first language may well influence what goes on in your brain when you speak English or French today. In a paper published today in Nature Communications, researchers from McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute describe their discovery that even brief, early exposure to a language influences how the brain processes sounds from a second language later in life. Even when the first language learned is no longer spoken.

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Many human gene variants have evolved specifically to protect older adults against neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases, thus preserving their contributions to society, report University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers in the November 30 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Results of 6-year URI nursing study at Women & Infants Hospital released in The Journal of Pediatrics.

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>Wild-caught chimpanzees, who were orphaned and imported from Africa in their early infancy, exhibit an impaired social behaviour also as adults. So far long-term effects of early traumatic experiences on social behaviour were known only for humans and socially isolated chimpanzees.

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Organized extracurricular sport activities for children help them develop and improve cognitive skills, such as greater concentration capacity, that can in term greatly help them in the classroom, says Université de Montréal professor Linda Pagani.

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“Blink and you’ll miss it” isn’t only for eyelids. The human brain also blinks, dropping a few frames of visual information here and there. Those lapses of attention come fast — maybe just once every tenth of a second. But some people may be missing more than others, according to psychologists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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The thickness of the cortex in a region of the brain that specializes in facial recognition can predict an individual's ability to recognize faces and other objects.

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Preschoolers who score lower on a working memory task are likely to score higher on a dropout risk scale at the age of 13, researchers at Université Sainte-Anne and the University of Montreal revealed today.

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Music has long been described, anecdotally, as a universal language. This may not be entirely true, but we're one step closer to understanding why humans are so deeply affected by certain melodies and modes.

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Research conducted at the University of Warwick indicates that chronic pain sufferers could benefit from therapy to help them sleep better.

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New research suggests that older women who complain of memory problems may be at higher risk for experiencing diagnosed memory and thinking impairment decades later. The study is published in the October 28, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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We use sight to judge distance. Now, a new study from the University of Rochester reveals that our brains also use sound delays to fine-tune what our eyes see when estimating distances.

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How did Pavlov’s dogs learn to associate a ringing bell with the delayed reward that followed? Scientists have had a working theory, but now a research team has proven it.

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University of Missouri research shows that babies’ repetitive babbles, such as "baba" or "dada," primarily are motivated by infants’ ability to hear themselves. Infants with profound hearing loss who received cochlear implants to improve their hearing soon babbled as often as their hearing peers, allowing them to catch up developmentally.

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Each 80 minutes/day (assuming 16 awake hours/day) increase in sedentary duration was linked with a 20% increased likelihood of having chronic kidney disease in a recent study. Research that uncovered the association between sedentary behavior and kidney disease will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2015 November 3–8 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA.

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Babies born prematurely face an increased risk of neurological and psychiatric problems that may be due to weakened connections in brain networks linked to attention, communication and the processing of emotions, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine.

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Mystical experiences are frequently labeled as indescribable or ineffable. However, new research suggests that when prompted, people who have had a mystical, spiritual or religious experience can describe the event.

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Baylor researchers have four tips to help parents and educators explain the presidential election to children in fun, engaging and non-partisan ways.

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New research by a Florida State University psychology professors delves into how children build their vocabularies and what words are easiest for them to learn.

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Why do babies smile when they interact with their parents? Could their smiles have a purpose? In the Sept. 23 issue of PLOS ONE, a team of computer scientists, roboticists and developmental psychologists confirm what most parents already suspect: when babies smile, they do so with a purpose—to make the person they interact with smile in return. To verify their findings, researchers programmed a toddler-like robot to behave like the babies they studied and had the robot interact with undergraduate students.

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Researchers led by Bradley S. Peterson, MD, director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, have shown that lower levels of conflict-related brain activity are associated with a higher risk for later psychosis. The study, in conjunction with colleagues at Columbia University, is available via PubMed in advance of publication by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.