A little practice goes a long way, according to researchers at McMaster University, who have found the effects of practice on the brain have remarkable staying power. The results are published this month in the journal Psychological Science. Check the end of this report for a link to download the original study.
Each time you see a person that you know, your brain rapidly and seemingly effortlessly recognizes that person by his or her face. Until now, scientists believed that only a couple of brain areas mediate facial recognition. However, Carnegie Mellon University’s Marlene Behrmann, David Plaut, and Adrian Nestor have discovered that an entire network of […]
A large body of neuropsychological and neuroimaging research has already determined the various brain regions responsible for face recognition and voice recognition separately, but exactly how our brain goes about combining the two different types of information (visual and auditory) is still unknown. Now a new study, published in the March 2011 issue of Elsevier’s […]
Scientists have made the surprising discovery that our ability to recognize and remember faces peaks at age 30 to 34, about a decade later than most of our other mental abilities. Researchers Laura T. Germine and Ken Nakayama of Harvard University and Bradley Duchaine of Dartmouth College will present their work in a forthcoming issue […]
The face of a doll is clearly not human; the face of a human clearly is. Telling the difference allows us to pay attention to faces that belong to living things, which are capable of interacting with us. But where is the line at which a face appears to be alive? A new study published […]
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are the first to use brain imaging to examine the effects of emotion on working memory function in children with pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). PBD and ADHD are very severe developmental disorders that share behavioral characteristics such as impulsivity, irritability, and […]
A 1-minute video showing computer screensavers next to videos of dancing children may prove to be a simple, inexpensive screening tool for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in toddlers. According to an NIMH-funded study, infants as young as 14 months old who had autism spent more time looking at the moving shapes than social images, in […]
A specific area in our brains is responsible for processing information about human and animal faces, both how we recognize them and how we interpret facial expressions. Now, Tel Aviv University researcher Dr. Galit Yovel is exploring what makes this highly specialized part of the brain unique – a first step to finding practical applications […]
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