Detection of Light in Blind People Illuminates Light’s Non-Visual Roles

November 9, 2013

We can detect light even if we cannot see it. And in a startling new discovery, even some totally blind people can detect light. Brief exposure to blue light triggered brain activity associated with alertness and attention – helping scientists further understand light’s role in cognition for all people. “The […]

Pennies for Treats: Dieting Through Brain Training

October 26, 2013

What’s the first treat you pull out of your candy bag on Halloween? Probably your favorite guilty pleasure… but what if you could use pennies to train yourself to pick a candy you might not like the most but that might be healthier? A new study finds that we may […]

Photo credit: John Solem, UMass

Sleeping for Learning: How Children and Adults Maximize Their Memory Potential

October 10, 2013

It’s not quantity but quality that matters when it comes to how much sleep strengthens our memories. A growing body of research is finding that specific stages of sleep shape particular types of learning in the brain. Whether for children napping or for older adults catching z’s at night, we […]

Musings on Consciousness, Technology and Bioethics: Q&A with Adrian Owen

October 1, 2013

“Surely, if we are going to make judgments about whether people should be kept or alive or allowed to die after serious brain injury, it’s better if the people themselves are involved in that decision-making process, rather than others – doctors, relatives, etc. – being entirely responsible for making that […]

Boost Your Brain with Aerobic Exergames

September 24, 2013

Q&A with Cay Anderson-Hanley “While exercise does not appear to be a cure-all, it is one of the strongest tools that we individually can enlist in our fight against cognitive decline and diseases of many types.” Playing video games that double as exercise can reap mental benefits above and beyond […]

Honza Groh; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Navigation and Recall: Why There Are Some Places We Just Can’t Forget

September 10, 2013

Even for those of us navigationally challenged, we may have vivid memories of exactly where we once saw a bad accident or a deer on the side of the road. These negative experiences boost our recall of places, according to new research. As a result, the very places we may […]

Visual Recognition Study that Led to New fMRI Analysis Technique

August 26, 2013

Breakthroughs in cognitive neuroscience: Highlighting influential research from the past 20 years This series explores influential papers in cognitive neuroscience, as measured by the number of times they are cited each year. The papers featured are a sampling of many important works in the field over the past 20 years. […]

credit: Oxfordian Kissuth

Meditation Training Helps Smokers Quit Smoking – Even If They Didn’t Plan To

August 16, 2013

Curbing a smoking habit is a tough task, but a new tool could be in the arsenal: meditation. A new study found that a meditation training regiment reduced smoking among participants, even those who did not intend to kick the habit. “Individuals at risk for substance abuse, including smoking, typically […]

How Testosterone Affects Risk-Taking in Adolescent Boys and Girls

August 1, 2013

Adolescents are infamous for engaging in more risky behavior as they mature from children to adults. This transition is notable for many changes, including a surge in testosterone for both boys and girls. The changing levels of testosterone, combined with the size of a frontal region of the brain, help […]

Stress Hormone Hinders Memory Recall

July 24, 2013

Most of us can recall a time when our mind blanked in an exam. Ironically, that vivid memory is of a time when we just couldn’t remember something. Part of the explanation for this contradiction is the stress hormone cortisol. While increased levels of cortisol boost the formation of memories, […]

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