Living with pain is stressful, but a surprisingly short investment of time in mental training can help you cope. A new study examining the perception of pain and the effects of various mental training techniques has found that relatively short and simple mindfulness meditation training can have a significant positive effect on pain management. Though […]
Scientists have long known that the brain’s frontal cortex supports concrete rule learning. Less clear is how the brain processes more complex and unfamiliar knowledge. In a paper published today (Wednesday, April 28, 2010) in the journal Neuron, a team of researchers at Brown University and the University of California–Berkeley tested whether the frontal lobe […]
Whether it’s for money, marbles or chalk, the brains of reward-driven people keep their game faces on, helping them win at every step of the way. Surprisingly, they win most often when there is no reward. That is the finding of neuroscientists at Washington University in St. Louis, who tested 31 randomly selected subjects with […]
Researchers reporting online on April 22nd in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, offer more evidence that successful study habits should include plenty of napping. They found that people who take a nap and dream about a task they have just learned perform it better upon waking than either those who don’t sleep at all […]
A study by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) carried out in Krakow, Poland has found that prenatal exposure to pollutants can adversely affect children’s cognitive development at age 5, confirming previous findings in a New York City (NYC) study. Researchers report that children exposed to high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) […]
Some of us need regular amounts of coffee or other chemical enhancers to make us cognitively sharper. A newly published study suggests perhaps a brief bit of meditation would prepare us just as well. While past research using neuroimaging technology has shown that meditation techniques can promote significant changes in brain areas associated with concentration, […]
A new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet provides evidence that basic human learning systems use areas of the brain that also exist in the most primitive vertebrates, such as certain fish, reptiles and amphibians. The study involved an investigation into the limbic striatum, one of the evolutionarily oldest parts of the brain, […]
Human memory for visual scenes varies according to a number of factors. These include the novelty of the scene, its behavioral relevance, and the subject’s attention. Often, people will clearly remember details of the context in which they received shocking news – for example, remembering where they were and what they were doing when they […]
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