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Trouble Achieving Goals? Why Your Brain Needs Reminders.
Many of us set goals, but sometimes we fail to achieve them. There is a way, though, to increase our chances of hitting our goals: Set reminders. “It’s quite hard to achieve our goals,” said Sam Gilbert, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University College London. “There are many, many reasons why we get led astray, or we don’t manage to realize our goals.” One common, but addressable reason is that we simply forget them. Psychological studies suggest that 50 to 70 percent of our everyday memory failures involve forgetting our intentions. Creating reminders can help address this problem. Research explains why.
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When a Brain Injury Impairs Memory, a Pulse of Electricity May Help
If you've ever had trouble finding your keys or remembering what you had for breakfast, you know that short-term memory is far from perfect. For people who've had a traumatic brain injury (TBI), though, recalling recent events or conversations can be a major struggle. "We have patients whose family cannot leave them alone at home because they will turn on the stove and forget to turn it off," says Dr. Ramon Diaz-Arrastia, who directs the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinical Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. So Arrastia and a team of scientists have been testing a potential treatment. It involves delivering a pulse of electricity to the brain at just the right time. ...
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How Bad Is Screen Time for Kids, Really?
Screen time has been a hot-button topic for parents for decades and particularly over the past few years. The rise of personal devices like tablets, phones and smart watches, along with the use of screens in schools, has made screen time common for kids. Data also shows that screen time skyrocketed during the pandemic as parents struggled to juggle working with managing their children being at home. Screen time guidelines have changed slightly over time. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) used to recommend no screen time at all for children until 18 to 24 months, and limiting kids ages 2 to 5 to an hour or less of screen time a day. ...
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How to Learn Something New Every Day
Many people consider learning to be an active endeavor, one that takes place in a classroom with a teacher and homework and tests. This intentional form of education is just one way to acquire knowledge. In fact, we absorb new information every day, often unintentionally: the best way to store tomatoes, the quickest way to get to work, the dog’s preferred chew toy. “It’s really important to give ourselves credit for the massive amount of information we learn without realizing it,” says cognitive scientist Pooja Agarwal, an assistant professor at the Berklee College of Music. There is a distinction between committing facts to memory and learning.
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Humans Will Trade Pain for Useless Information
People often go great lengths to earn a reward—no pain, no gain, as the saying goes. A new study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that many will also go to great lengths for functionally worthless information, showing a willingness to endure physical pain for information about the value of a monetary reward, even when that information won’t affect its value. “This study gives us a vivid new window to understand how we motivate ourselves to seek information about our future,” says Ethan Bromberg-Martin, a neuroscientist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who wasn’t involved in the study.
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Want to Be More Successful? Neuroscience Shows Embracing a Growth Mindset Actually Changes How Your Brain Functions