Study: Taking a break – even for 10 seconds – helps your brain learn

A study finds that even short breaks help you solidify new learning. In a way, learning really only happens during your breaks. For the most effective learning sessions, build-in short rest periods. None It's been believed for some time that resting, ideally sleeping, after learning something new helps you lock in your newly acquired knowledge. Now a study finds that even short breaks can be beneficial. It's a fascinating study that suggests that we don't improve as we practice, but rather dur...
Tags: Productivity, Learning, Memory, Neuroscience, Hack, Teaching, Brain, Innovation, National Institutes of Health, Nih, Oakley, Cohen, Barbara Oakley, Marlene Bönstrup, Leonard G Cohen, Bönstrup

Learning another language should be compulsory in every school

In the 1960s, in our public schools in California along the border with Mexico, Spanish language-learning was a requirement, beginning in sixth grade. I couldn't wait to get to sixth grade to start learning Spanish. Our school was more than 50 per cent Mexican-Americans, and I was keen to understand them as they switched back and forth from fluent English to fluent Spanish (or, as they called it, 'Mexican'). As I began to learn it, my friends asked if I spoke Spanish at home. No, just in school....
Tags: Amazon, Learning, Education, Children, California, Mexico, US, Neuroscience, Brain, United States, Language, Innovation, John, William, Dad, Tijuana

A Better Information Diet

PART I: HOW WE THINK To improve and maintain your capacity to get information, you have to understand how it comes to you. ~Andy Grove, 1983 [1] We monitor what we eat and drink, optimizing our diet for health and performance, not just enjoyment--and yet we can be heedless about what we read, watch, and listen to. Our information diet is often the result of accident or happenstance rather than thoughtful planning. Even when we do choose deliberately, the intent behind much of our media ...
Tags: Google, Facebook, New York, Leadership, Stanford, Communication, Neuroscience, Atlantic, Jack Dorsey, Franklin Foer, Accel Partners, Andy Grove, Ucla, Daniel Kahneman, Sam Anderson, Boyd

Oliver Sacks’ Recommended Reading List of 46 Books: From Plants and Neuroscience, to Poetry and the Prose of Nabokov

Image by Luigi Novi. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons We remember Oliver Sacks as a neurologist, but we remember him not least because he wrote quite a few books as well. If you read those books, you'll get a sense of Sacks' wide range of interests — invention, perception and misperception, hallucination, and more — few of which lack a connection to the human mind. His passion for ferns, the core subject of a travelogue he wrote in Oaxaca as well as an unexpectedly frequent objec...
Tags: Google, Facebook, Books, College, America, Neuroscience, Antarctica, Charles Darwin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Seoul, Sigmund Freud, Oaxaca, Paul Theroux, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert, Francis Crick

Neurotic people have noisier, more chaotic minds, say researchers

Neuroticism is characterized by emotional instability and lack of resilience.People who score high on neuroticism are at an increased risk for mental health problems and relationship woes. New research suggests that neurotic people deal with more mental noise.Of the main personality traits, Neuroticism (characterized by emotional instability and lack of resilience) is probably the one with the least going for it.High scorers on this trait are impulsive, tend to worry a lot, and they struggle wit...
Tags: Psychology, Neuroscience, Brain, Personality, Innovation, Emotions, Robinson, BPS Research Digest, Klein, Michael Robinson, Robert Klein

Trait neuroticism as "mental noise" — neurotic people have noisier, more chaotic minds, say researchers

Of the main personality traits, Neuroticism (characterised by emotional instability and lack of resilience) is probably the one with the least going for it.High scorers on this trait are impulsive, tend to worry a lot, and they struggle with low moods and short tempers. Thanks to personality research, we know a lot about what lies in store for people who score high on Neuroticism, such as increased risk of mental health problems and relationship turmoil. But as Robert Klein and Michael Robinson ...
Tags: Psychology, Neuroscience, Brain, Personality, Innovation, Emotions

Eating nuts may boost fetal brain development

A Spanish study finds that nuts consumed early in pregnancy boost babies' cognitive strength. Eating walnuts, almonds, peanuts, pine nuts and/or hazelnuts early in pregnancy can make a big difference. For those without allergies, nuts are good food. None While the medical community — and parents — continue to deal with the 1 in 5 kids who suffer from a peanut allergy, there's some news about a very different, and beneficial, role such nuts can play in the diet of expecting mothers. A study fro...
Tags: Food, Parenting, Pregnancy, Neuroscience, Intelligence, Medical Research, Innovation, Nuts, Cognitive Science

Mapping Emotions in the Body: A Finnish Neuroscience Study Reveals Where We Feel Emotions in Our Bodies

“Eastern medicine” and “Western medicine”—the distinction is a crude one, often used to misinform, mislead, or grind cultural axes rather than make substantive claims about different theories of the human organism. Thankfully, the medical establishment has largely given up demonizing or ignoring yogic and meditative mind-body practices, incorporating many of them into contemporary pain relief, mental health care, and preventative and rehabilitative treatments. Hindu and Buddhist critics ...
Tags: Psychology, Google, Biology, College, Neuroscience, American Museum of Natural History, Buddhist, Facebook Twitter, National Academy of Sciences, Josh Jones, Lauri Nummenmaa, Hamer, Durham NC Follow, Riitta Hari, Riitta Hari Enrico Glerean, Jari K Hietanen

How to Memorize an Entire Chapter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I mentally revisit the various homes of my childhood, wandering from room to room, turning on lights and peering in closets until I conk out. Turns out these imaginary tours are also handy mnemonic tools, as Vox’s Dean Peterson explains above. Hey, that’s good news… isn’t the subconscious rumored to do some heavy lifting in terms of processing information? Peterson conquered a self-described bad memory, at least temporarily, by traipsing around his apartmen...
Tags: Google, Books, Science, Education, College, New York City, Neuroscience, Memory Palace, Mark Twain, Vox, Einstein, Dick, Herman Melville, Lombardy, John Waters, Facebook Twitter

Avengers: Endgame, Dark Matter, and a Fake Bear Not Named Ron: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

It’s nearly May, and you know what that means: Game of Thrones will be ending, Divination Bot will soon return to haunt your sleep with machine-generated nightmares, and the weather will be much less depressing.Read more...
Tags: Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Science, Technology, Microsoft, Privacy, Labor, Neuroscience, Star Trek, Cybersecurity, Mouse, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Oceans, Game Of Thrones, Aviation

Vocal Tract Simulator Translates a Person's Brain Activity Into Clear Sentences

By capturing brain signals associated with the mechanical aspects of speaking, such as movements of the jaw, lips, and tongue, researchers have created a virtual, computer-based vocal tract capable of intelligible speech. The system could eventually be used by people who have lost the capacity to speak.Read more...
Tags: Science, Neuroscience, Speech, Assistive Devices, Brain Computer Interfaces, Speech Decoding

Scientists create decoder to turn brain activity into speech

Technology could in effect give voice back to people with conditions such as Parkinson’sScientists have developed a decoder that can translate brain activity directly into speech.In future the brain-machine interface could restore speech to people who have lost their voice through paralysis and conditions such as throat cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson’s disease. Continue reading...
Tags: Health, Science, Cancer, Neuroscience, Society, Medical Research, Parkinson's Disease, Parkinson

Blind People Really Do Have More Sensitive Hearing, MRI Study Finds

A new study out Monday suggests that losing your sight early in life can lead to subtle alterations in the brain circuitry primarily responsible for hearingRead more...
Tags: Science, Neuroscience, Brains, Blindness

Neuromyth: Brain Scanners “See” Thinking

There are hundreds of intriguing headlines that combine with the general feeling of Big Brother watching your every move to result in the myth that we can somehow “see” brains thinking. Headlines like “Brain Scan that Shows Researchers What You Are THINKING About” are even more disturbing and declare, “brain scans now allow researchers to know exactly what a person is imagining.” 109 Other headlines like, “Mind-Reading Computer Instantly Decodes People’s Thoughts” 110 and “This Camera Records th...
Tags: Psychology, Neuroscience, Cornell, Nathan Spreng, Real Time, Brain Scan, Spreng, Neuromyths, Brain Imaging Machine, Brain Scanner, De Charms

Find new inspiration with these time-tested approaches to creativity

Beethovan and Picasso are the perfect examples for mastering the creative process.Behind each of their works are countless studies and sketches. The lesson? Never erase anything, keep iterating, and find new paths to familiar destinations. The Runaway Species: How human creativity remakes the world by now at amazone --> List Price: $28.00 New From: $13.99 in Stock Used From...
Tags: Music, Neuroscience, History, Brain, Creativity, Innovation, Mind, Picasso, Anthony brandt, Beethovan

Scientists Partially Revive Disembodied Pig Brains, Raising Huge Questions

Researchers from Yale have developed a system capable of restoring some functionality to the brains of decapitated pigs for at least 10 hours after death. The achievement has tremendous scientific potential, but it raises some serious ethical and philosophical concerns.Read more...
Tags: Science, Neuroscience, Yale, Brains, Bioethics, Life Extension, Brain Preservation, Pig Brains, Organ Preservation, Cellular Restoration

Does Time Really Fly When You’re Having Fun?

If you’re a parent, chances are you might recall a long road trip with your family when you’ve been on the road maybe all of ten minutes, and you hear that dreaded question from the back seat: “Are we there yet?” Time passes slowly for children, especially when they’re anticipating something (as in their vacation destination), or when they’re bored. So you suggest that your child read a book or watch a video. Or you play travel games with them. You know, to make the time go by faster. We know...
Tags: Psychology, Happiness, Neuroscience, Perception, Dopamine, Memory And Perception, Cognitive Psychology, Neurotransmitter, Memory Formation

Scientists reverse memory decline using electrical pulses

Working memory of older group temporarily improves to match younger group in studyA decline in memory as a result of ageing can be temporarily reversed using a harmless form of electrical brain stimulation, scientists have found.The findings help explain why certain cognitive skills decline significantly with age and raise the prospect of new treatments. Continue reading...
Tags: Health, Science, Memory, Neuroscience, Society, Medical Research, Ageing

Neurons as Art: See Beautiful Anatomy Drawings by the Father of Neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Art depends on popular judgments about the universe, and is nourished by the limited expanse of sentiment. . . . In contrast, science was barely touched upon by the ancients, and is as free from the inconsistencies of fashion as it is from the fickle standards of taste. . . . And let me stress that this conquest of ideas is not subject to fluctuations of opinion, to the silence of envy, or to the caprices of fashion that today repudiate and detest what yesterday was praised as sublime. - Santi...
Tags: Google, Art, Europe, Science, College, New York City, Neuroscience, New York Times, Facebook Twitter, Flora, Leonardo da Vinci, Golgi, Ramon, Ernst Haeckel, Roberta Smith, Santiago Ramón

The rise of the killer robots – and the two women fighting back

Jody Williams and Mary Wareham were leading lights in the campaign to ban landmines. Now they have autonomous weapons in their sights It sounds like something from the outer reaches of science fiction: battlefield robots waging constant war, algorithms that determine who to kill, face-recognition fighting machines that can ID a target and take it out before you have time to say “Geneva conventions”.This is no film script, however, but an ominous picture of future warfare that is moving ever clos...
Tags: Europe, Science, Technology, Germany, Neuroscience, UK News, World news, Military, US military, Robots, Computing, Mary Wareham, Artificial intelligence (AI, Drones (military, Jody Williams

Retrain the Brain to Deal with Chronic Pain

An interesting March 2019 article discusses a new way to help teenagers to deal with certain types of chronic pain. Pain specialists estimate there are thousands of young people suffering from inexplicable pain that intensifies, traveling randomly from one part of their body to the next. It primarily affects girls, though some boys also experience this type of pain. Some doctors call it “amplified pain” and this term acts as a catch-all for a variety of diagnoses which are not yet well u...
Tags: Psychology, Neuroscience, ERP, Philadelphia, Sherry, Chronic Pain, Brain And Behavior, Health-related, Children s Hospital, Devyn, David Sherry, Dr Sherry

MDMA Made Older Mice Start Socializing Like Teenagers

You might think of young brains as soft clay that can take on new shapes in response to various inputs. But as time passes, the clay hardens and is less workable—and like clay, older brains can be less likely to change in response to new situations. Scientists doing research in mice have realized this analogy seems to…Read more...
Tags: Psychology, Science, Neuroscience, Ptsd, Brains, Mice, Mdma

Behold an Anatomically Correct Replica of the Human Brain, Knitted by a Psychiatrist

Our brains dictate our every move. They’re the ones who spur us to study hard, so we can make something of ourselves, in order to better our communities. They name our babies, choose our clothes, decide what we’re hungry for. They make and break laws, organize protests, fritter away hours on social media, and give us the green light to binge watch a bunch of dumb shows when we could be reading War and Peace. They also plant the seeds for Fitzcarraldo-like creative endeavors that take over our l...
Tags: Google, Art, Science, Design, College, New York City, Neuroscience, Creativity, Facebook Twitter, Norberg, Karen Norberg

Manage change with SCARF

As a business coach and people developer, I address the needs of my clients during an initial in-depth discussion. I have one of these coming up soon on 25th January, with a new client for whom I have not worked before. I was recommended to them by a colleague of theirs who knows and trusts how I work. In that initial session, I will help them to ascertain whether the issues they perceive they have are, indeed, the ones they need to address. That is often an unusual step for prospective clients ...
Tags: Leadership, Relationships, Uncategorized, Change Management, Neuroscience, Change, Rewards, David Rock, Neuroleadership Institute, Hult International Business School, SCARF model, Ashridge Executive Education

Better detection of concussions using vital signs

As a father of a young ice hockey player, I’m all too familiar with every parent’s concern about concussions. As a neuroscientist, I chose not to accept that it was okay to rely on subjective and error-prone tests to understand how best to care for our brains after concussion. We dared ourselves to think bigger, and to devise a solution that was larger than concussions – to ask the question: “Why don’t we have objective vital signs for brain function?”We have vital signs for our body like heart ...
Tags: Health, Books, Featured, Neuroscience, Brain, Canada, United States, Neurology, Brain Injury, Concussion, Health & Medicine, Simon Fraser University, Rochester Minnesota, Science & Medicine, Medical Mondays, Biomedicine

New evidence for a human magnetic sense that lets your brain detect the Earth’s magnetic field

Do human beings have a magnetic sense? Biologists know other animals do. They think it helps creatures including bees, turtles and birds navigate through the world.Scientists have tried to investigate whether humans belong on the list of magnetically sensitive organisms. For decades, there's been a back-and-forth between positive reports and failures to demonstrate the trait in people, with seemingly endless controversy.The mixed results in people may be due to the fact that virtually all past s...
Tags: Brain, Neuroscience, Senses, Cognitive science, Physics, Magnetic field

Why We Dance: An Animated Video Explains the Science Behind Why We Bust a Move

Has any culture, apart from that of the tiny Utah town in Footloose, done entirely without dancing? It would at first seem that any human need the rhythmic shaking of one's limbs to organized sound fulfills must reside pretty low on the overall priority scale, but anthropology tells us that various human societies started dancing before they got into most every other activity that fills their time today. "Why is this ostensibly frivolous act so fundamental to being human?" asks the Aeon vid...
Tags: Google, Utah, College, France, Neuroscience, Dance, Oxford, Footloose, Seoul, Ramones, Facebook Twitter, Tarr, Durkheim, Colin Marshall, Emile Durkheim, 21st Century Los Angeles

Why is 18 the age of adulthood if the brain can take 30 years to mature?

Research suggests that most human brains take about 25 years to develop, though these rates can vary among men and women, and among individuals.Although the human brain matures in size during adolescence, important developments within the prefrontal cortex and other regions still take pace well into one's 20s.The findings raise complex ethical questions about the way our criminal justice systems punishes criminals in their late teens and early 20s. None At what age does someone become an adult? ...
Tags: Children, Neuroscience, Bbc, Brain, Innovation, San Diego, Cambridge University, Criminal Justice, Jones, Temple University, Newsweek, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Laurence Steinberg, Peter Jones, Rady Children s Hospital, Howard Forman

Mini-brains attach to spinal cord and twitch muscles

Researchers find a new and inexpensive way to keep organoids growing for a year. Axons from the study's organoids attached themselves to embryonic mouse spinal cord cells. The mini-brains took control of muscles connected to the spinal cords. None Scientists have been experimenting with organoids — mini-brains — for a while now, but research just published in Nature Neuroscience takes things up another notch. Three things distinguish the lentil-sized mini-brains developed by Madeline Lancaster...
Tags: Neuroscience, Discovery, Brain, Medical Research, Innovation, Cambridge, Synthetic Biology, Biomechanics, Nature Neuroscience, Medical Research Council, Madeline Lancaster, Cognitive Science, Organoid, Mini-brain, ALI CO

Humans have a sixth sense for Earth's magnetic field

A new study suggests that humans can subconsciously sense Earth's magnetic field. While this capability, called magnetoreception, is well known in birds and fish, there is now evidence that our brains are also sensitive to magnetic fields. The researchers from Caltech and the University of Tokyo measured the brainwaves of 26 participants who were exposed to magnetic fields that could be manipulated. Interestingly, the brainwaves were not affected by upward-pointing fields. From Science News: ...
Tags: Post, News, Magnets, Neuroscience, Earth, ESP, Brains, University Of Tokyo, Caltech, Northern Hemisphere, Magnetism, Geomagnetic Field, Science Art Magic, Joseph Kirschvink