This site has been archived. It is no longer being updated, but still contains a wealth of reports on cognitive and brain research, providing the evidence-based foundations for the articles on Mempowered, and my books. For more up-to-date reporting, and most particularly, for more user-friendly advice about improving your memory, or dealing with cognitive problems, go to Mempowered.
Memory Problems
A German study involving 1,936 older adults (50+) has found that mild cognitive impairment (MCI) occurred twice as often in those diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
In my book on remembering intentions, I spoke of how quickly and easily your thoughts can be derailed, leading to ‘action slips’ and, in the wrong circumstances, catastrophic mistakes.
Stress is a major cause of workplace accidents, and most of us are only too familiar with the effects of acute stress on our thinking. However, although the cognitive effects are only too clear, research has had little understanding of how stress has this effect.
Strategies
I’ve reported often on the perils of multitasking. Here is yet another one, with an intriguing new finding: it seems that the people who multitask the most are those least capable of doing so!
Online social networking, such as Facebook, is hugely popular. A series of experiments has explored the intriguing question of whether our memories are particularly ‘tuned’ to remember the sort of information shared on such sites.
I reported recently on how easily and quickly we can get derailed from a chain of thought (or action).
Aging
Evidence is accumulating that age-related cognitive decline is rooted in three related factors: processing speed slows down (because of myelin degradation); the ability to inhibit distractions becomes impaired; working memory capacity is reduced.
I’ve written before about the gathering evidence that sensory impairment, visual impairment and hearing loss in particular, is a risk factor for age-related cognitive decline and dementia.
A new study adds more support to the idea that the increasing difficulty in learning new information and skills that most of us experience as we age is not down to any difficulty in acquiring new information, but rests on the interference from all the old information.
How Memory Works
Our life-experiences contain a wealth of new and old information. The relative proportions of these change, of course, as we age. But how do we know whether we should be encoding new information or retrieving old information?
Here’s an intriguing study for those interested in how language affects how we think.
Study Skills
I’ve spoken before about the effects of motivation on test performance.
A study into how well students understand specific diagrams reminds us that, while pictures may be worth 1000 words, even small details can make a significant difference to how informative they are.
A meta-analysis of 242 articles assessing the math skills of 1,286,350 people found no difference between the two sexes.
Lifestyle
Another study looking into the urban-nature effect issue takes a different tack than those I’ve previously reported on, that look at the attention-refreshing benefits of natural environments.
Because sleep is so important for memory and learning (and gathering evidence suggests sleep problems may play a significant role in age-related cognitive impairment), I thought I’d make quick note of a recent review bringing together all research on the immediate effects of alcohol on the sleep
Organophosphate pesticides are the most widely used insecticides in the world; they are also (according to WHO), one of the most hazardous pesticides to vertebrate animals.