You’ve been stuck in traffic forever and are waiting in a long lineup at a red light. The light finally turns green and you start slowly moving, only to find that the light turns yellow as soon as you approach the intersection. Do you go for it and run the yellow (or maybe red!), or […]
Stop Interrupting Me! Distractions Kill Writing Quality
Guest Post by Cyrus Foroughi, George Mason University The day before I began writing this post, I decided to run a small-scale case study on myself. I wanted to count the number of times I was interrupted during the day. I did not silence my phone nor did I disable any notifications (e.g., email, Facebook) […]
Is Imagination Just Another Form of Remembering?
Now that we’re in the dog days of summer, I find myself imagining the perfect summer vacation – long trips to Greece, or maybe Fiji… somewhere I have never been. My imagined trips would not be complete without my memories from past trips – the feel of the breeze from the shore, happy times spent […]
Social Priorities: We Rapidly Process Communicative Cues
A smile, a wave, a head nod – seemingly small communicative gestures are of vital importance even for babies. And new research finds that the brain processes these social cues faster than previously thought, as quickly as 70 milliseconds. The finding gives insight into the brain’s priorities that may further understanding of both typical and […]
Why It’s So Tough for People in Power to Truly Feel Your Pain
I feel your pain. These words are famously associated with Bill Clinton, who as a politician seemed to ooze empathy. A skeptic might wonder, though, whether such a powerful figure really was personally distressed by the suffering of average Americans. Can people in high positions of power — be they presidents, bosses, celebrities and so […]
How Loss of Hearing Leads to Improved Vision in the Deaf
We have all heard the amazing things the brain can do when deprived of one of the senses – stories about blind people with incredible hearing or deaf people with amazing visual skills. That is because the part of the brain responsible for hearing reorganizes itself in the deaf to take in visual information (and […]
Drawing Draws on Complex Cognitive Processes
Drawing objects seems like a simple task – most of us, from young to old, can copy simple pictures even if we lack artistic talent. An inability to draw simple pictures is often a symptom of a cognitive disorder or brain damage. New research looking at stroke patients has found that drawing depends on several complex cognitive processes […]
Unleashing the Power of the Bilingual Mind
Guest post by Anna M. Beres, Bangor University Writing or talking about my research in English is relatively easy. I do it everyday, even though my native language is Polish and I work in Wales, where I am constantly switching between English and Welsh. But whenever I try to explain my work to my family in […]
Rethinking Time for Independence in Children’s Daily Lives
If your July 4th plans are anything like my family’s, it’s fully loaded with lots of planned activities: parade at 10am, pool at 2pm, BBQ at 4pm, fireworks at 9pm, etc. Little time is left unstructured for the kids to, well, be independent. New research gives me pause to think, though, about whether for July […]
What Triggers Spontaneous Memories of Emotional Events?
Whether we like it or not, sometimes distant memories of past events pop into our heads for no apparent reason. Study after study has found that memories associated with high emotions are more likely to spontaneously come to the surface than non-emotional ones. But these memories may lack specific details – cued by familiar surroundings […]
