Feature Channels: Cognition and Learning

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NYU Langone study offers the first solid evidence that functional MRI scans of brain entropy are a new means to understanding human intelligence.

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Researchers at the University of Arkansas and the Ministry of Education of China studied expert and non-expert video game players and observed that both groups showed an increase in visual selective attention after only one hour of video game play.

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Author, activist and Brown University honors graduate Jonathan Mooney didn’t learn to read until he was 12.

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Eight years ago, Dr. Jeff Avansino, a surgeon at Seattle Children’s, and his wife, Dr. Amy Criniti, welcomed their third child – a boy named Luke.

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• In generally healthy older men, slightly lower sodium levels in the blood were related to both cognitive impairment and declines in cognitive function over time. • Additional studies are needed to determine whether correction of lower serum sodium may influence cognition in older adults.

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As is true in humans, chimpanzees' general intelligence is correlated to their ability to exert self-control and delay gratification, according to new research at Georgia State University.

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Childhood play experiences strongly shape a person's spatial skills and those skills can be critical to success in fields like science and engineering.

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Spending too much time in dimly lit rooms and offices may actually change the brain's structure and hurt one's ability to remember and learn, indicates groundbreaking research by Michigan State University neuroscientists.

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A diet created by researchers at Rush University Medical Center may help substantially slow cognitive decline in stroke survivors, according to preliminary research presented on Jan. 25, at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2018 in Los Angeles. The finding are significant because stroke survivors are twice as likely to develop dementia compared to the general population.

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Infants recognize that speech in a language not their own is used for communication, finds a new psychology study. The results offer new insights into how language is processed at a young age.

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A new study examines the benefit of combining theatrical techniques with behavioral treatment approaches for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

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Babies are adept at getting what they need – including an education. New research shows that babies organize mothers’ verbal responses, which promotes more effective language instruction, and infant babbling is the key.

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Confirming earlier computational models, researchers at University of California San Diego and UC San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in Arizona and Louisiana, report that episodic memories are encoded in the hippocampus of the human brain by distinct, sparse sets of neurons.

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A new study from the University of Washington Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) provides one of the first looks inside the infant’s brain to show where the sense of touch is processed — not just when a baby feels a touch to the hand or foot, but when the baby sees an adult’s hand or foot being touched, as well. Researchers say these connections help lay the groundwork for the developmental and cognitive skills of imitation and empathy.

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In a new international collaborative study between The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, researchers created a machine learning algorithm that uses brain scans to predict language ability in deaf children after they receive a cochlear implant. This study’s novel use of artificial intelligence to understand brain structure underlying language development has broad reaching implications for children with developmental challenges. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

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A protein involved in cognition and storing long-term memories looks and acts like a protein from viruses. The protein, called Arc, has properties similar to those that viruses use for infecting host cells, and originated from a chance evolutionary event that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago.

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New research reveals ecological knowledge in 4-year-old children from urban Native American, rural Native American and urban non-Native American communities.

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WASHINGTON -- The drive to be perfect in body, mind and career among today’s college students has significantly increased compared with prior generations, which may be taking a toll on young people’s mental health, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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Feeding eggs to infants could provide them with key nutrients for better brains. A study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis finds infants who were in introduced to eggs beginning at 6 months showed significantly higher blood concentrations of choline, other biomarkers in choline pathways, and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

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When brain lesions occur within the brain network responsible for morality and value-based decision-making, they can predispose a person toward criminal behavior, according to new research by Ryan Darby, MD, assistant professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC).

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Canola oil is one of the most widely consumed vegetable oils in the world, yet surprisingly little is known about its effects on health.

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Neglect accounts for the majority of all child protection cases in the United States, yet child welfare workers lack effective assessment tools for identifying the associated risk and protective factors of chronic neglect. The ineffective assessments are often the result of using instruments that are not specifically designed to include elements predicting chronic neglect, according to a new study by a University at Buffalo research team.

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Dr. Nathan Bryan, Baylor College of Medicine and one of the leading experts in nitric oxide biochemistry and physiology said today, “healthcare providers, especially those helping patients with cardiovascular issues and age-related disease, are not using perhaps the most important ‘tool’ in their ‘toolbox,’ restoring nitric oxide function. Bryan organized and chaired a full day workshop on the Clinical Applications of Nitric Oxide held during the 25th American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine World Congress.

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Parents and pediatricians know that reading to infants is a good thing, but new research shows reading books that clearly name and label people and objects is even better.

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A schizophrenia patient’s own perceptions of their experiences -- and confidence in their judgments -- may be factors that can help them overcome challenges to get the life they wish, suggests a new paper published in Clinical Psychological Science from researchers at Penn Medicine’s Aaron T. Beck Psychopathology Research Center.

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Study in mice reveals a brain circuit that regulates social memory formation and recognition. Results shed light on brain’s ability to reconcile conflicting social stimuli, and shed light on anomalies in social behavior seen in neurodevelopmental, neurologic and psychiatric disorders

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A new study is the first to identify a mechanism that could explain an early link between sound input and cognitive function, often called the “Mozart effect.”

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When we try to stop a body movement at the last second, perhaps to keep ourselves from stepping on what we just realized was ice, we can’t always do it — and neuroscientists have figured out why.

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Racial differences in parents’ reports of concerns about their child’s development to healthcare providers may contribute to delayed diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in black children, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

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Infants raised in homes where they hear a single language, but spoken with different accents, recognize words dramatically differently at about 12 months of age than their age-matched peers exposed to little variation in accent, according to a University at Buffalo expert in language development. The findings point to the importance of considering the effects of multiple accents when studying speech development and suggest that monolingual infants shouldn’t be viewed as a single group.

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Mount Sinai researchers have found a positive relationship between the brain network associated with working memory—the ability to store and process information relevant to the task at hand—and healthy traits such as higher physical endurance and better cognitive function.

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Pigeons aren't so bird-brained after all. New research from the University of Iowa shows that pigeons can discriminate the abstract concepts of space and time, likely using a different region of the brain than humans and primates to do so. Results appear in the journal Current Biology.

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Our mental life is rich with an enormous number of internal experiences. We can vividly recall an episode from childhood as well as what we did just five minutes ago. We can imagine and plan in detail our next vacation. How does the brain achieve this magic? In a new study researchers showed that internal experiences, such as recalling personal memories, are associated with the simultaneous activity of different cognitive systems.

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In early 2017, Courtney Kalaher formed the Out Loud Dance Studio in Houston. Twice each week, students in the area come together to laugh, play and express themselves through movement.

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The first study to actually count the number of cortical neurons in the brains of a number of carnivores, including cats and dogs, has found that dogs possess significantly more neurons than cats.

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The Weizmann Institute's Prof. Noam Sobel has found that persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical persons reacted differently to the "smell of fear" and "calm sweat" - in fact, they reacted in opposite ways.

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Vanderbilt psychologists have discovered that when you shift your attention from one place to another, your brain 'blinks'—experiences momentary gaps in perception.

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Teaching students to think critically is challenging, but a new strategy that asks students to describe what they see in a piece of artwork is helping develop critical-thinking skills.

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Playing a video game that rewards participants for holding various “ninja” poses could help children and youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) improve their balance, according to a recent study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Ray Hull, professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Wichita State University, understands that the ability to learn is imperative for every person seeking a goal. This is why he included "The Art of Learning and Self-Development" in the personal development series that he co-authors with New York Times best-selling author Jim Stovall.

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Everyone needs an occasional break, though spending too much time alone can be unhealthy and there is growing evidence that the psychosocial effects of too much solitude can last a lifetime. But newly published research by a University at Buffalo psychologist suggests that not all forms of social withdrawal are detrimental. In fact, the research findings published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences suggest that one form of social withdrawal, referred to as unsociability, is not only unrelated to negative outcomes, but linked positively to creativity.

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A PCR-based approach to a frontier of the human genome -- the centromere -- could speed discovery in chromosome-based diseases and birth defects.

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Nearly 15 percent of Kentucky children are currently diagnosed with ADHD, the highest rate in the nation. While medicine alone doesn't necessarily lead to improved academic performance in the long run, a new intervention developed by UK professors is aiming to do just that.

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A University of Illinois at Chicago social psychologist reports on two studies that examined why some people are inclined to believe in various conspiracies and paranormal phenomena.

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The Goffin's cockatoo is not a specialised tool user in the wild but has shown the capacity to invent and use different types of tools in captivity. Now cognitive biologists from the University of Vienna and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna tested these parrots in a tool use task, requiring the birds to move objects in relation to a surface. The animals had to choose the correct "key" to insert into a "keyhole" in a box, aligning its shape to the shape of a surface cutout inside the box during insertion. The parrots were not only able to select the correct key but also required fewer placement attempts to align simple shapes than primates in a similar study.

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The first study of individual variation in visual ability has shown that there is a broad range of differences in people’s capability for recognizing and remembering novel objects and has determined that these variations are not associated with individuals’ general intelligence, or IQ.

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Not all dual-language learners are at risk academically. A new Iowa State study found as dual-language learners gained English proficiency, they had significant growth in cognitive and academic development, eventually outperforming students who only spoke English.

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Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.

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Afterschool programs with positive, responsive, and organized environments can have academic benefits for students, finds a new study by NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

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Less than one-third of adults believe that kids are physically healthier today compared to kids in their own childhoods and fewer than 25 percent think children's mental health status is better.