Language Delays Found In Siblings Of Children With Autism
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New research by psychologists at Queen Mary, University of London has revealed that the way we see the world might depend on reflexes in the brain. Writing in the Journal of Vision, Dr Michael Proulx from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, and former student Monique Green, explain how an optical illusion known as the Müller-Lyer Illusion captures our attention more strongly than other visual tests, suggesting that the brain calculates size as a reflex fast enough to guide where the eyes look. Check the end of this report for a link to download the full text, original research paper.
Human minds have hit an evolutionary “sweet spot” and – unlike computers – cannot continually get smarter without trade-offs elsewhere, according to research by the University of Warwick. Researchers asked the question why we are not more intelligent than we are given the adaptive evolutionary process. Their conclusions show that you can have too much of a good thing when it comes to mental performance.
People with diets high in several vitamins or in omega 3 fatty acids are less likely to have the brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer’s disease than people whose diets are not high in those nutrients, according to a new study published in the December 28, 2011, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study author was Gene Bowman, ND, MPH, of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.
Both children and the elderly have slower response times when they have to make quick decisions in some settings. But recent research suggests that much of that slower response is a conscious choice to emphasize accuracy over speed. In fact, healthy older people can be trained to respond faster in some decision-making tasks without hurting their accuracy – meaning their cognitive skills in this area are not so different from younger adults.
Patients with Parkinson disease-related dementia appear to have increased brain atrophy in the hippocampal, temporal and parietal lobes and decreased prefrontal cortex volume compared to patients with Parkinson disease without dementia, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archivesjournals. The study was conducted by Daniel Weintraub, M.D., of the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and colleagues.
A major study of recent international data on school mathematics performance casts doubt on some common assumptions about gender and math achievement — in particular, the idea that girls and women have less ability due to a difference in biology. “We tested some recently proposed hypotheses that try to explain a supposed gender gap in math performance and found they were not supported by the data,” says Janet Mertz, senior author of the study and a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Swarms of bees and brain neurons make decisions using strikingly similar mechanisms, reports a new study in the Dec. 9 issue of Science. In previous work, Cornell University biologist Thomas Seeley clarified how scout bees in a honeybee swarm perform “waggle dances” to prompt other scout bees to inspect a promising site that has been found.
Babies born at a very low birth weight are more likely to have memory and attention problems when they become adults than babies born at a low to normal weight, according to a study published in the December 6, 2011, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
A healthy diet and the right amount of exercise are key players in treating and preventing obesity but we still know little about the relationship both factors have with each other. A new study now reveals that an increase in physical activity is linked to an improvement in diet quality. Many questions arise when trying to lose weight. Would it be better to start on a diet and then do exercise, or the other way around? And how much does one compensate the other?
As we get older, our cognitive abilities change, improving when we’re younger and declining as we age. Scientists posit a hierarchical structure within which these abilities are organized. There’s the “lowest” level — measured by specific tests, such as story memory or word memory; the second level, which groups various skills involved in a category of cognitive ability, such as memory, perceptual speed, or reasoning; and finally, the “general,” or G, factor, a sort of statistical aggregate of all the thinking abilities.
