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Alcohol dependence (AD) has negative effects on cognitive processes such as memory. Metamemory refers to the subjective knowledge that people have of their own cognitive processing abilities, such as their monitoring and control of memory. A new study has found that AD has a negative impact on both episodic memory as well as metamemory. Results will be published in the November 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
The ability to remember is not just to glimpse into the past; a sharp memory can help with creativity, productivity and even the ability to imagine the future, according to several psychologists. Sleep, aging and brain chemistry research were all discussed during several presentations on memory at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.
Sons who have fond childhood memories of their fathers are more likely to be emotionally stable in the face of day-to-day stresses, according to psychologists who studied hundreds of adults of all ages. Psychology professor Melanie Mallers, PhD, of California State University-Fullerton presented the findings at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.
Where you grow up can have a big impact on the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and even how your brain works. In a report in a special section on Culture and Psychology in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Denise C. Park from the University of Texas at Dallas and Chih-Mao Huang from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discuss ways in which brain structure and function may be influenced by culture.
Many neuroscientists believe the loss of the brain region known as the amygdala would result in the brain’s inability to form new memories with emotional content. New UCLA research indicates this is not so and suggests that when one brain region is damaged, other regions can compensate. The research appears this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
When your mind drifts, it is hard to remember what was going on before you stopped paying attention. Now a new study has found that the effect is stronger when your mind drifts farther – to memories of an overseas vacation instead of a domestic trip, for example, or a memory in the more distant past. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Those ubiquitous wires connecting listeners to you-name-the-sounds from invisible MP3 players – whether of Bach, Miles Davis or, more likely today, Lady Gaga – only hint at music’s effect on the soul throughout the ages. Now a data-driven review by Northwestern University researchers that will be published July 20 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience pulls together converging research from the scientific literature linking musical training to learning that spills over to skills including language, speech, memory, attention and even vocal emotion. The science covered comes from labs all over the world, from scientists of varying scientific philosophies, using a wide range of research methods.
The more an older woman weighs, the worse her memory, according to new research from Northwestern Medicine. The effect is more pronounced in women who carry excess weight around their hips, known as pear shapes, than women who carry it around their waists, called apple shapes. This the first study to link obesity and body shape to poorer brain function in older women. The study will be published July 14 in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.
A commercial brain fitness program has been shown to improve memory in older adults, at least in the period soon after training. The findings are the first to show that practicing simple visual tasks can improve the accuracy of short-term, or “working” visual memory. The research, led by scientists at UCSF, is also one of the first to measure both mental performance and changes in neural activity caused by a cognitive training program.
Nicotine patches and gum are common – and often ineffective – ways of fighting cigarette cravings, as most smokers have discovered. Now a new study from Tel Aviv University shows why they are ineffective, and may provide the basis for more successful psychologically-based smoking cessation programs. The results will be published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
A new University of British Columbia study says that an over reliance on research subjects from the United States and other Western nations can produce false claims about human psychology and behavior because their psychological tendencies are highly unusual compared to the global population. The study will soon be published in Nature and Behavioral Sciences this week. Check the end of this report for a link to download the original article.
Scientists have discovered a compound that restores the capacity to form new memories in aging rats, likely by improving the survival of newborn neurons in the brain’s memory hub. The research, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, has turned up clues to a neuroprotective mechanism that could lead to a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
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