A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Limiting screen time before bedtime is beneficial for sleep. shutterstock Sleep is an essential part of our development and wellbeing. It is important for learning and memory, emotions and behaviours, and our health more generally. Yet the total amount of sleep that children and adolescents are getting is continuing to decrease. Why? - [...]
A study funded by the National Science Foundation's Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate suggests babies begin to acquire knowledge in the womb earlier than previously thought.Research led by Charlene Krueger, an associate professor at the University of Florida's College of Nursing, and published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development, provides evidence that what [...]
When we look at a known word, our brain sees it like a picture, not a group of letters needing to be processed. That's the finding from a Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, which shows the brain learns words quickly by tuning neurons to respond to a complete [...]
Most of the time, we learn only gradually, incrementally building connections between actions or events and outcomes. But there are exceptions—every once in a while, something happens and we immediately learn to associate that stimulus with a result. For example, maybe you have had bad service at a store once and sworn that you will [...]
In Australia, anxiety is even more common than depression. In fact, about one in four of us suffer from it. The general belief is that stress or circumstances cause it. But, this might not necessarily be the case. Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, says some of us have a feel-good [...]
Now, a new study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014 has found a link between trans fat and memory impairment. Researchers looked at the eating habits of 1000 healthy men above the age of 20, and postmenopausal women to determine the effect trans fat has on memory. Participants completed a dietary questionnaire [...]
“Something we now know, from doing dozens of studies, is that emotions can either enhance or hinder your ability to learn,” Marc Brackett, a senior research scientist in psychology at Yale University, told a crowd of educators at a conference last June. “They affect our attention and our memory. If you’re very anxious about something, [...]
Despite significant advances in brain imaging and cognitive science, neuroscientists continue to search for how the brain develops and retains perceptions and memories. Emerging evidence suggests that a group of neurons can represent each unique piece of information, but no one knows just what these ensembles look like, or how they form. In a new [...]
