-
Children whose minds wander ‘have sharper brains’
The Telegraph: A study has found that people who appear to be constantly distracted have more “working memory”, giving them the ability to hold a lot of information in their heads and manipulate it mentally. Children at school need this type of memory on a daily basis for a variety of tasks, such as following teachers’ instructions or remembering dictated sentences. During the study, volunteers were asked to perform one of two simple tasks during which researchers checked to ask if the participants’ minds were wandering. At the end, participants measured their working memory capacity by their ability to remember a series of letters interspersed with simple maths questions.
-
Your Brain on Fiction
The New York Times: AMID the squawks and pings of our digital devices, the old-fashioned virtues of reading novels can seem faded, even futile. But new support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience. Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life. Researchers have long known that the “classical” language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are involved in how the brain interprets written words.
-
The Real Risks of ‘Racy’ Thinking
Huffington Post: I worked in the news business for many years, and sometimes the pace could get hectic. But the work day didn't really charge up until mid-morning. In the early-morning hours, my routine was to leaf through several of the day's newspapers, including the sports section, usually with my feet up on my desk. Occasionally I would check the AP ticker or turn on the TV, but not until after I had spent some time with the papers and my morning coffee. This was back in the 20th century, of course, and looking back, that pace seems almost leisurely by today's standards. Technology has radically altered the way that many of us consume information.
-
Head Games: How Visual Illusions Improve Sports Performance
TIME: It’s that time of year again. March Madness is around the corner and athletes — and inspired fans — are aiming to improve their performance on the court. It turns out, the secret to game-time success may lie in players’ imaginations. A new study finds that athletes are more likely to score when they think their target — be it a basket or golf hole — is larger than it really is. Researchers from Purdue University studied 36 college students putting into a golf hole up a ramp. Using a projector, the researchers created an optical illusion that showed a ring of circles around the golf hole which altered its perceived size.
-
Newer states spawn unique names
The Columbian: When Washougal residents Kyle and Dianna Curtis had their first daughter, Brooklynn, they wanted to give her a unique name that would epitomize her personality. “I wanted a unique but not a farfetched, ridiculous name,” Dianna Curtis said. Nationwide, names have become more unconventional in the past 20 years in tandem with an increasing value placed on individualism, according to a 2010 study by researchers from San Diego State University and the University of Georgia. “In recent times, … the culture emphasizes uniqueness more than past eras or eastern states,” said Jean Twenge, psychology professor at San Diego State University, who co-authored the study.
-
Comfort or Food? This Harlow Love Song Has the Answer
Harry Harlow conducted his famous experiments on maternal separation and social isolation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1950s and 1960s. Decades later, Brad Wray and his independent study students from Arundel High School in Maryland have set one of those experiments to music. Harlow took baby monkeys from their mothers and placed them with two “surrogate” mothers: one made of wire that dispensed milk and one made of terry cloth that didn’t dispense milk. The song, set to the tune of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours,” tells how the baby monkeys had to make a choice.
