Feature Channels: Cognition and Learning

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Completely locked-in participants report being “happy”

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Tinnitus -- "ringing in the ears" -- affects an estimated 50 million Americans and is the leading service-related disability among U.S. veterans. Until recently, very little could be done for sufferers, but now a new, FDA-approved technology is successfully treating it. The Levo System mimics the buzzing, hissing, whistling or clicking sounds that many tinnitus sufferers describe and "trains" the brain to ignore them, thereby alleviating the condition entirely. To do this, patients wear earbuds at night while sleeping, when the brain is most responsive to sensory input.

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A new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is giving researchers a first look at the early stages of brain development in patients with Fragile X syndrome, a disorder that causes mild to severe intellectual disability and is the most common genetic cause of autism spectrum disorder.

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PHOENIX – Mayo Clinic researchers have found that engaging in mentally stimulating activities, even late in life, may protect against new-onset mild cognitive impairment, which is the intermediate stage between normal cognitive aging and dementia. The study found that cognitively normal people 70 or older who engaged in computer use, craft activities, social activities and playing games had a decreased risk of developing mild cognitive impairment. The results are published in the Jan. 30 edition of JAMA Neurology.

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Children who believe intelligence can grow pay more attention to and bounce back from their mistakes more effectively than kids who think intelligence is fixed, indicates a new study that measured the young participants’ brain waves.

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• Harvard Medical School scientists and colleagues from the Massachusetts General Hospital have partly restored hearing in mice with a genetic form of deafness. • Scientists altered a common virus, enhancing its ability to enter hair cells in the inner ear that are critical for hearing and to deliver a missing gene essential for hearing and balance. • The new approach overcomes a longstanding barrier to gene therapy for inherited and acquired deafness.

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By the age of 6, girls become less likely than boys to associate brilliance with their own gender and are more likely to avoid activities said to require brilliance, shows a new study conducted by researchers at New York University, the University of Illinois, and Princeton University.

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The study compared art students and social science students. The finding: art student sleep more hours, but reported more sleep disturbance and daytime dysfunction

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Adolescents who smoke marijuana as early as 14 do worse by 20 on some cognitive tests and drop out of school at a higher rate than non-smokers. But if they hold off until age 17, they're less at risk.

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The study, published Jan. 24, 2017, in Pediatrics, is the first to assess how implementation of a state-wide screening can pick up hearing loss in infants due to congenital cytomegalovirus.

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Mental sharpness in women begins to decline as early as their 50s. Cognitive processing speed, which includes speed of perception and reaction, showed an average decline of around 1 percent every two years and verbal memory declined on average around 1 percent every five years.

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Northwestern Medicine scientists showed for the first time that non-invasive brain stimulation can be used like a scalpel, rather than like a hammer, to cause a specific improvement in precise memory.Precise memory, rather than general memory, is critical for knowing details such as the specific color, shape and location of a building you are looking for, rather than simply knowing the part of town it’s in.

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Mandarin makes you more musical – and at a much earlier age than previously thought. That’s the suggestion of a new study from the University of California San Diego. But hold on there, overachiever parents, don’t’ rush just yet to sign your kids up for Chinese lessons instead of piano.

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A clinical trial of interactive book reading finds that children with Specific Language Impairment need to hear a word 36 times to learn it vs. 12 times for typically-developing children. Treatment materials are freely available to speech-language pathologists.

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Students who are given information and tell someone about it immediately recall the details better and longer — a strategy which could be a plus come test time, says a Baylor University researcher.

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University of Illinois at Chicago learning scientist Susan Goldman has been selected to receive the Society for Text and Discourse's 2017 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

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Schools should use both ability grouping and acceleration to help academically talented students, reports a new Northwestern University study that examined a century of research looking at the controversial subject.

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Cognitive skills and experiences like classroom-based play in kindergarten lead to participation in extracurricular activities in 8th grade among children growing up in poverty, finds a new study led by NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

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In a perspective published January 6, 2017, in Science, Hamilton Farris, PhD, Associate Professor-Research at LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence, finds that the key insight of an important study is that perception can drive the evolution of observable traits.

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Preterm babies perform as well as their full-term counterparts in a developmental task linking language and cognition, a new study from Northwestern University has found.The study, the first of its kind with preterm infants, tests the relative contributions of infants’ experience and maturational status. Northwestern researchers compared healthy preterm and full-term infants at the same maturational age, or age since conception.