Infants are able to detect how speech communicates unobservable intentions, researchers at New York University and McGill University have found in a study that sheds new light on how early in life we can rely on language to acquire knowledge about matters that go beyond first-hand experiences.
In a new study that has implications for distracted drivers, researchers found that people are better at juggling some types of multitasking than they are at others.
Ever wonder how the human brain, which is constantly bombarded with millions of pieces of visual information, can filter out what’s unimportant and focus on what’s most useful? The process is known as selective attention and scientists have long debated how it works. But now, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have discovered an important clue. Evidence from an animal study, published in the July 22 online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, shows that the prefrontal cortex is involved in a previously unknown way.
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis who were decoding the activity of populations of neurons in the motor cortex discovered that they could tell how a monkey was planning to approach a reaching task, in effect, reading their minds.
The ability of infants to recognize speech is more sophisticated than previously known, researchers in NYU’s Department of Psychology have found. Their study showed that infants, as early as nine months old, could make distinctions between speech and non-speech sounds in both humans and animals.
A new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin found that people associate past memories with novel information. This memory-binding process allows people to better understand new concepts and make future decisions. The findings could lead to better teaching methods, as well as treatment of degenerative neurological disorders, such as dementia.
We’ve all been there: Meeting someone new and seconds later forgetting his or her name. According to an expert, it’s not necessarily your brain that determines how well we remember names, but rather our level of interest.
Has your memory failed you today, such as struggling to recall a word that's "on the tip of your tongue?" If so, you're not alone.
Children who are skilled in understanding how shapes fit together to make recognizable objects also have an advantage when it comes to learning the number line and solving math problems. The work is further evidence of the value of providing young children with early opportunities in spatial learning, which helps them mentally manipulate objects.
Stress may affect brain development in children — altering growth of a specific piece of the brain and abilities associated with it — according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Working memory training is unlikely to be an effective treatment for children suffering from disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity or dyslexia, according to a research analysis published by the American Psychological Association. In addition, memory training tasks appear to have limited effect on healthy adults and children looking to do better in school or improve their cognitive skills.
Infants ignore information that is too simple or too complex, focusing instead on situations that are “just right,” according to a new study. Dubbed the “Goldilocks effect” by the University of Rochester team that discovered it, the attention pattern sheds light on how babies learn to make sense of a world full of complex sights, sounds, and movements.
A new UCLA study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning--and how omega-3 fatty acids can minimize the damage.
After completing the first study of its kind, researchers at McMaster University have discovered that very early musical training benefits children even before they can walk or talk. They found that one-year-old babies who participate in interactive music classes with their parents smile more, communicate better and show earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music.
Women who are obese before they become pregnant are at higher risk of having children with lower cognitive function - as measured by math and reading tests taken between ages 5 to 7 years - than are mothers with a healthy prepregnancy weight, new research suggests.
Researchers uncover cognitive strategies that support cross-cultural competence regardless of personality traits.
UCSF scientists have identified patterns of brain activity in the rat brain that play a role in the formation and recall of memories and decision-making. The discovery, which builds on the team’s previous findings, offers a path for studying learning, decision-making and post-traumatic stress syndrome.
A new study confirms that though born with equal abilities to tell other-race people apart, by age 9 months infants are better at recognizing faces and emotional expressions of same-race people and the ability to distinguish other-race faces and match emotional sounds with expressions declines.
Just 20 minutes of playing a violent shooting video game made players more accurate when firing a realistic gun at a mannequin – and more likely to aim for and hit the head, a new study found.
People aren't very good at media multitasking - like reading a book while watching TV - but do it anyway because it makes them feel good, a new study suggests. The findings provide clues as to why multitasking is so popular, even though many studies show it is not productive.
The ability to navigate using spatial cues was impaired in mice whose brains were minus a channel that delivers potassium — a finding that may have implications for humans with damage to the hippocampus, a brain structure critical to memory and learning, according to a Baylor University researcher.
Challenging a mainstream scholarly position, a study suggests that the number-line concept is not innate but learned and that precise numbers can exist in a culture without linear representation. Related work shows there is another way to think about time too – one that does not rely on placing past and future on a line, or use the body as a reference point.
Study supports application of slow release of immunoglobulins to delay the onset of AD
The longstanding mystery of how selective hearing works – how people can tune in to a single speaker while tuning out their crowded, noisy environs – is solved this week in the journal Nature by two scientists from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
In an age when even preschoolers have electronic toys and devices, many parents wonder how to get their children to be more physically active. Now, two studies published by University at Buffalo researchers provide some answers.
A pair of neuroscientists from Vanderbilt and Harvard Universities has proposed the first neurobiological model for third-party punishment. It outlines a collection of potential cognitive and brain processes that evolutionary pressures could have re-purposed to make this behavior possible.
Practices like physical exercise, certain forms of psychological counseling and meditation can all change brains for the better, and these changes can be measured with the tools of modern neuroscience, according to a review article now online at Nature Neuroscience.
A small change in how teachers and parents read aloud to preschoolers may provide a big boost to their reading skills later on, a new study found.
A network of brain regions which is activated during intense aesthetic experience overlaps with the brain network associated with inward contemplation and self-assessment, New York University researchers have found. Their study sheds new light on the nature of the aesthetic experience, which appears to integrate sensory and emotional reactions in a manner linked with their personal relevance.
A global team has mapped the human genes that boost or sabotage the brain’s resistance to a variety of mental illnesses and Alzheimer’s disease. The UCLA-launched study also uncovered new genes that explain individual differences in brain size and intelligence
Worrying may have evolved along with intelligence as a beneficial trait, according to a recent study by scientists at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and other institutions.
A brain-mapping study has found that people's ability to make decisions in novel situations decreases with age and is associated with a reduction in the integrity of two specific white-matter pathways.
In a discovery that could help instructors better teach deaf children, a team of University of Chicago researchers has found that a gesture-sign mismatch made while explaining a math problem suggests that a deaf child is experiencing a teachable moment.
Two new studies published in the April 4 online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, suggest that a person’s memory declines at a faster rate in the last two-and-a-half years of life than at any other time after memory problems first begin. The second study shows that keeping mentally fit through board games or reading may be the best way to preserve memory during late life. Both studies were conducted by researchers at Rush University Medical Center.
A new study finds that brain processing involvement in the decoding of Arabic is different to the involvement in reading Hebrew and English, which makes learning Arabic more challenging.
People with schizophrenia who completed 80 hours of intensive, computerized cognitive training exercises were better able to perform complex tasks that required them to distinguish their internal thoughts from reality.
Children who play with puzzles between ages 2 and 4 later develop better spatial skills, a study by University of Chicago researchers has found. Puzzle play was found to be a significant predictor of cognition after controlling for differences in parents’ income, education and the overall amount of parent language input.
A large, prospective study led by a researcher at Rush University Medical Center indicates that chronic exposure to particulate air pollution may accelerate cognitive decline in older adults.
There will always be a wild, unpredictable quality to creativity and invention, says cognitive psychology researcher Anthony McCaffrey, because reaching an “Aha moment” means leaping tall mental obstacles. But he has developed a tookit for overcoming common roadblocks and improving problem-solving.
The concept of the subliminal message is now familiar. A subconscious suggestion can help a person bring about positive change, such as smoking cessation, or otherwise influence one’s actions. The science behind reaching this suggestive state and how to successfully present a message of change has its own journey.
MIT neuroscientists explore how longstanding conflict influences empathy for others.
Using a nicotine patch may help improve mild memory loss in older adults, according to a study published in the January 10, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Daily Show viewers are deep. That might be a shallow analysis of the research, but “there is a segment of the political satire audience that is motivated by a deeper level of processing,” says Dannagal Young, University of Delaware assistant professor of communication and lead researcher on a study that examined how college students watch and process different types of programming.
Bingo, a popular activity in nursing homes, senior centers and assisted-living facilities, has benefits that extend well beyond socializing. Researchers found high-contrast, large bingo cards boost thinking and playing skills for people with cognitive difficulties and visual perception problems produced by Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD).
Findings provide a better understanding of the effects of normal aging, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases on the performance of everyday cognitive tasks.
Babies born at a very low birth weight are more likely to have memory and attention problems when they become adults than babies born at a low to normal weight, according to a study published in the December 6, 2011, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Preschool children who hear their parents describe the size and shape of objects and then use those words themselves perform better on tests of their spatial skills, according to a study that is the first to show that learning to use a wide range of spatial words predicts children’s later spatial thinking, which is important in mathematics and science.
Intelligence and smart thinking are not the same, according to University of Texas at Austin psychologist Art Markman, who studies how best to apply knowledge for smarter thinking at work and home.
University of Illinois at Chicago biology professors Janet Richmond and David Featherstone found the protein tomosyn plays an important role in regulating neurotransmitter between synapses, and consequently plays a role in longer-term memory and learning. The results may prove helpful in developing new drugs to treat human memory loss.
According to research on third- and fifth-grade classrooms presented at the 162nd meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), fifth-grade students were found to have lower reading test scores in classrooms with higher background noise. A similar negative trend was observed between the fifth-grade language achievement test scores and background noise levels.
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