STUDY: New Adult Brain Cells May Be Central To Lifelong Learning

In a recent study, researchers have shown that "new adult neurons showed a pattern of changing plasticity very similar to that seen in brain cells in newborn animals. That is, the new adult brain cells showed a 'critical period' in which they were highly plastic before they settled into the less plastic properties of mature brain cells. In newborn animals, such a critical period enables an important, early burst of wiring of new brain circuitry with experience..." more»

NEW JOURNAL: Mind, Brain, and Education

This journal will promote the integration of the diverse disciplines that investigate human learning and development -- to bring together education, biology, and cognitive science to form the new field of mind, brain, and education. more»

Human beings are unique in their ability to learn through schooling and diverse kinds of cultural instruction. Education plays a key role in cultural transformations: It allows members of a society, the young in particular, to efficiently acquire an ever-evolving body of knowledge and skills that took thousands of years to invent. It is time for education, biology, and cognitive science to join together to create a new science and practice of learning and development.

ARTICLE: What the myth of mirror neurons gets wrong about the human brain

Mirror neurons have become the "left brain/right brain" of the 21st century... more»

The myth of mirror neurons may not do much harm. Perhaps it's even good for science that in the 21st century we turn to the brain, rather than gods and monsters, for our mythical images. Still, science and science writing are supposed to get us closer to the truth, while the myth of mirror neurons may do just the opposite. Instead of teaching us about how the mind works, it may perpetuate some broad misconceptions about neuroscience and what the study of the brain can tell us about human nature.

STUDY: The root of dyscalculia found

Dyscalculia is just as prevalent in the population as dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – around 5% of the population is affected. Scientists have induced dyscalculia in subjects without the maths learning difficulty for the first time. The study, which finds that the right parietal lobe is responsible for dyscalculia, potentially has implications for diagnosis and management through remedial teaching... more»

“This is the first causal demonstration that the parietal lobe is the key to understanding developmental dyscalculia. Most people process numbers very easily – almost automatically – but people with dyscalculia do not. We wanted to find out what would happen when the areas relevant to maths learning in the right parietal lobes were effectively knocked out for several hundred milliseconds. We found that stimulation to this brain region during a maths test radically impacted on the subjects’ reaction time. This provides strong evidence that dyscalculia is caused by malformations in the right parietal lobe and provides sold grounds for further study on the physical abnormalities present in dyscalculics’ brains. It’s an important step to the ultimate goal of early diagnosis through analysis of neural tissue, which in turn will lead to earlier treatments and more effective remedial teaching.

STUDY: Fears learned by observing others are similar to those learned from direct experience

This is the first study that examines the brain basis of fears acquired indirectly. Similar neural systems are engaged when fears are learned through first-hand experience or by merely observing others... more»

PERSPECTIVE: Neuroscience and Science Writing

Are "writerly approximations" acceptable when journalists cover neuroscience research as a way of collapsing different levels of scientific description? more»

RESOURCE: Long list of blogs about neuroscience and other topics

A blogroll of mostly neuroscience but inclusive of some cognitive science, psychology and psychiatry weblogs... more»

STUDY: Using brain scans, researchers find evidence for a two-stage model of human perceptual learning

This study provides the first human evidence for a two-stage model of how a person learns to place objects into categories more»

STUDY: How the brain makes memories that last a lifetime

In the formation of long-term memories, the brain apparently co-opts the same machinery by which cells stably alter their genes to specialize during embryonic development... more»

STUDY: Research finds music training 'tunes' human auditory system

Here's the first study to provide concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brain stem’s sensitivity to speech sounds... more»

"We've found that by playing music -- an action thought of as a function of the neocortex -- a person may actually be tuning the brainstem," says Kraus. "This suggests that the relationship between the brainstem and neocortex is a dynamic and reciprocal one and tells us that our basic sensory circuitry is more malleable than we previously thought."

STUDY: Prefrontal cortex loses neurons during adolescence

Apparently, the brain reorganizes in a very fundamental and gendered way during adolescence [in rats]. What it really means, who knows... more»

RESOURCE: Portable brain-computer interface (EEG)

The world’s first commercially available brain computer interface (BCI) for EEG... more»

STUDY: Severe PTSD Damages Children's Brains

Children with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol were likely to experience a decrease in the size of the hippocampus - a brain structure important in memory processing and emotion... more»

STUDY: Boosting Brain Power -- With Chocolate

Our brains may get an attention boost for 2-3 hours from the flavonols found in dark chocolate. I can just imagine the "dark chocolate as test prep" advertisements being filmed already. Sigh... more»

PERSPECTIVE: Can Cognitive Neuroscience Tell Us Anything About the Mind?

Does cognitive neuroscience really have the power to distinguish between psychological theories? more»

STUDY: A deficit in the ability to form new human memories without sleep

Ruh-roh! "An absence of prior sleep substantially compromises the neural and behavioral capacity for committing new experiences to memory"... more»

STUDY: Problem forgetting may be a natural neural mechanism gone awry

The increased rate of forgetting with age may be from a slight shift in a normal forgetting mechanism... more»

STUDY: Auditory and visual memory use similar neural mechanisms

The brain may use fairly similar methods to generate light-based and sound-based memories... more»

STUDY: Decision-making -- Demonstration of a link between cognition and motor execution

For the first time, a cellular interaction has been demonstrated between purely cognitive and purely motor information. The study elucidates the mechanisms by which the basal ganglia integrate these two types of information... more»

STUDY: Revealing secret intentions in the brain

With 70% accuracy, it has been demonstrated that measurable brain activity reveals how a person has decided to act in the future... more»