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27 Sep 09

Microsoft researcher converts his brain into 'e-memory' - CNN.com

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posthumanism anthropology technology memory internet web cloudcomputing brain

But Bell, who is 75 years old, takes the idea of digital memory to a sci-fi-esque extreme. He carries around video equipment, cameras and audio recorders to capture his conversations, commutes, trips and experiences.
By about 2020, he says, our entire life histories will be online and searchable. Location-aware smartphones and inexpensive digital memory storage in the "cloud" of the Internet make the transition possible and inevitable.

08 Jun 09

BBC - Earth News - Chimps mentally map fruit trees

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chimps anthropology evolution brain intelligence primatology

20 Apr 09

Twitter Telepathy: Researchers Turn Thoughts Into Tweets | Wired Science from Wired.com

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twitter neuroscience technology brain

19 Apr 09

Neuroscience and social deprivation | I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told | The Economist

How poverty passes from generation to generation is now becoming clearer. The answer lies in the effect of stress on two particular parts of the brain

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poverty brain stress neuroscience psychology cognition sociology learning

THAT the children of the poor underachieve in later life, and thus remain poor themselves, is one of the enduring problems of society.
But nobody has truly understood what causes it. Until, perhaps, now.
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- The crucial breakthrough was made three years ago, when Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the working memories of children who have been raised in poverty have smaller capacities than those of middle-class children.
- Since Dr Farah’s discovery, Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg of Cornell University have studied the phenomenon in more detail.
- they have found that the reduced capacity of the memories of the poor is almost certainly the result of stress affecting the way that childish brains develop.
- Dr Evans’s and Dr Schamberg’s volunteers were 195 participants in a long-term sociological and medical study that Dr Evans is carrying out in New York state. At the time, the participants were 17 years old. All are white, and the numbers of men and women are about equal.
- To measure the amount of stress an individual had suffered over the course of his life, the two researchers used an index known as allostatic load.
- a combination of the values of six variables: diastolic and systolic blood pressure; the concentrations of three stress-related hormones; and the body-mass index, a measure of obesity.
- For all six, a higher value indicates a more stressful life; and for all six, the values were higher, on average, in poor children than in those who were middle class.
- The capacity of a 17-year-old’s working memory was also correlated with allostatic load. Those who had spent their whole lives in poverty could hold an average of 8.5 items in their memory at any time. Those brought up in a middle-class family could manage 9.4, and those whose economic and social experiences had been mixed were in the middle.
- the diminution of memory in the poorer members of their study was entirely explained by stress, rather than by any more general aspect of poverty.
- To confirm this result, the researchers also looked at characteristics such as each participant’s birthweight, his mother’s age when she gave birth, the mother’s level of education and her marital status, all of which differ, on average, between the poor and the middle classes. None of these characteristics had any effect. Nor did a mother’s own stress levels.
- That stress, and stress alone, is responsible for damaging the working memories of poor children thus looks like a strong hypothesis. It is also backed up by work done on both people and laboratory animals, which shows that stress changes the activity of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that carry signals from one nerve cell to another in the brain. Stress also suppresses the generation of new nerve cells in the brain, and causes the “remodelling” of existing ones. Most significantly of all, it shrinks the volume of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. These are the parts of the brain most closely associated with working memory.

Bringing up baby bilingually | Twice blessed | The Economist

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bilingualism language children learning psychology brain cognition

WHETHER to teach young children a second language is disputed among teachers, researchers and pushy parents. On the one hand, acquiring a new tongue is said to be far easier when young. On the other, teachers complain that children whose parents speak a language at home that is different from the one used in the classroom sometimes struggle in their lessons and are slower to reach linguistic milestones.
A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may help resolve this question by getting to the nub of what is going on in a bilingual child’s brain
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- Agnes Kovacs and Jacques Mehler at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste say that some aspects of the cognitive development of infants raised in a bilingual household must be undergoing acceleration in order to manage which of the two languages they are dealing with.
- The aspect of cognition in question is part of what is termed the brain’s “executive function”.
- So Dr Kovacs and Dr Mehler looked at 40 “preverbal” seven-month-olds, half raised in monolingual and half in bilingual households, and compared their performances in a task that needs control of executive function.
- The bilingual babies, however, found it far easier to switch their attention—counteracting the previously learnt, but no longer useful response.
- Monitoring languages and keeping them separate is part of the brain’s executive function, so these findings suggest that even before a child can speak, a bilingual environment may speed up that function’s development.
- though, there are a few caveats. For one thing, these precocious cognitive benefits have been demonstrated so far only in “crib” bilinguals—those living in households where two languages are spoken routinely. The researchers speculate that it might be the fact of having to learn two languages in the same setting that requires greater use of executive function. So whether those benefits accrue to children who learn one language at home, and one at school, remains unclear.

12 Jan 09

How the city hurts your brain - Boston.com

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brain memory neuroscience psychology nature

16 Sep 08

YouTube - Brain based education: Fad or breakthrough--high quality

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30 Aug 08

Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain | Wired Science from Wired.com

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03 Mar 08

Technology Review: Blogs: Ed Boyden's blog: How to Think

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16 Feb 08

Blue Brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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02 Jun 07

Left Brain, Right Brain - Features - The Lab - Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Gateway to Science

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brain news psychology science

Spaling says we know with confidence that basic language processes are predominantly controlled by the left hemisphere, and spatial cognition like navigation or face recognition are coordinated by the right hemisphere. But when it comes to the question of ability, both hemispheres work in concert with each other.