10/05/2009 - 2:53pm

Surrealism for Sharper Thinking

Psychologists at the University of California in Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia have shown that when subjects are exposed to surrealistic stories the cognitive mechanisms involved in learning are enhanced.

09/16/2009 - 11:41am

Sport Advantage- Players' Skill and Brains

We can all agree that professional sportsmen are better at their particular sport than you or I. Is it because of intense practice or are they simply born with better skills? Or is there perhaps something else at work there?

Swiss and British researchers have been looking into this matter and have come up with some interesting insights.

Any sport that involves moving objects (like tennis), requires three levels of response for timing:

08/27/2009 - 10:00am

Children, Bilingualism and Brain Plasticity

Studies have found that the best age to learn a language is between birth and 7. This leaves most of the population out of learning a second language well enough to be considered a native speaker. Scientists have been looking into why children are able to learn languages so quickly and whether there is any way to apply the ability to adult language learning.

08/27/2009 - 9:09am

Multitasking and Multitaskers- More Means Less

Today it seems to be the norm to be multi tasking- doing more than one thing at a time. We get more and more information from different sources, which we are expected to process and handle.
 
Multitasking- no matter what form it takes- means that our brains must use their “executive control function” which is associated with the brain’s prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex.
 

03/09/2009 - 4:16pm

Reversing Age-Related Cognitive Decline

I’ve noticed that as people begin to experience age-related cognitive decline, they naturally start wondering about how much of it is normal and how much is reversible. Well, the bad news is that it’s inevitable and perfectly normal, and the good news is that you can do something about it.

03/09/2009 - 11:24am

Brain Teasers

Test Your Visual Acuity

Read the sentence in the triangle out loud:

If you read A BIRD IN THE BUSH, read it again slowly and you will discover that the word "THE" is repeated twice. The reason you missed it the first time is that your brain often goes into “automatic” mode when you’re reading something, especially if it’s a phrase as familiar as this one. Since you always expect to see only one "THE" in this sentence, that's what your brain tells you, even though it’s not true.