A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Flickr Images Every day in the United States, millions of expectant mothers take a prenatal vitamin on the advice of their doctor. The counsel typically comes with physical health in mind: folic acid to help avoid fetal spinal cord problems; iodine to spur healthy brain development; calcium to be bound like molecular Legos [...]
Pixabay Images Parents and policy makers have become obsessed with getting young children to learn more, faster. But the picture of early learning that drives them is exactly the opposite of the one that emerges from developmental science. The trouble is that most people think learning is the sort of thing we do [...]
iStockphoto Parents' beliefs about whether failure is a good or a bad thing guide how their children think about their own intelligence, according to new research from Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research indicates that it's parents' responses to failure, and not their beliefs about intelligence, that are [...]
Photo: Getty Images According to new research from Washington University School of Medicine, children whose mothers were more nurturing during the preschool years, rather than later on in childhood, have more robust growth in brain structures associated with learning memory and stress response, than kids with less supportive mums. As part of the study, [...]
David Hornsby Let’s start by letting you know what NAPLAN is not. It is not a measure of how intelligent you are. It is not a measure of what you are capable of. Your results on NAPLAN don't effect if you pass the year or not. I could tell you as a psychologist [...]
It’s hard to tell if students really know the answer or are guessing, which is why one university is scrapping multiple-choice exams. Shutterstock Multiple-choice questions have become one of the mainstays of assessment at universities across Australia and the world. But is this the best approach? Or even valid? Central Queensland University has [...]
Using test and brain-imaging data from more than 500 children and teens, researchers have created a 'growth chart' for brain development that could in future help spot attention issues and ADHD early. Credit: Sripada lab, University of Michigan Want to know if your child's height and weight are on track? Check the growth [...]
Credit: © Tatyana Gladskih / Fotolia Depression is a serious mental illness that has many negative consequences for sufferers. But depression among pregnant women may also have an impact on their developing babies. Children of depressed parents are at an increased risk of developing depression themselves, a combination of both genetic and environmental [...]
Stock Photo The human gastrointestinal tract harbours trillions of microorganisms, consisting of up to 1,000 or so different bacterial species. These bacteria, known collectively as the gut microbiota, perform a number of vital functions in our body. They defend against pathogens, aid in digestion and nutrient absorption, produce vitamins (K and B), and [...]
imgarcade.com For much of the history of brain science, the word “engram” has been a bit of a catch-all term, referring to the hypothetical physical incarnation of memory. If this turned out to be a storm of electrical activity, then that’s what the engram would be; if it turned out that networks of physical neurons were the [...]
