This site has been archived. It is no longer being updated, but still contains a wealth of reports on cognitive and brain research, providing the evidence-based foundations for the articles on Mempowered, and my books.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
In the experiment, rats learned which lever to press to receive water, where the correct lever depended on which lever they had pressed previously (the levers were retractable; there was a variable delay between the first and second presentation of the levers).
Following a study showing that playing Tetris after traumatic events could reduce memory flashbacks in healthy volunteers, two experiments have found playing Tetris after viewing traumatic images significantly reduced flashbacks while playing Pub Quiz Machine 2008 (a word-based quiz game) increas
A mouse study has revealed the brain becomes overly stimulated after a traumatic event causes an ongoing, frenzied interaction between two brain proteins long after they should have disengaged.
Strategies
More evidence that even an 8-week meditation training program can have measurable effects on the brain comes from an imaging study. Moreover, the type of meditation makes a difference to how the brain changes.
A small Swedish brain imaging study adds to the evidence for the cognitive benefits of learning a new language by investigating the brain changes in students undergoing a highly intensive language course.
In my last report, I discussed a finding that intensive foreign language learning ‘grew’ the size of certain brain regions. This growth reflects gray matter increase. Another recent study looks at a different aspect: white matter.
Aging
The latest finding from the large, long-running Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) Study adds to the evidence that preventing or controlling diabetes helps prevent age-related cognitive decline.
I often talk about the importance of attitudes and beliefs for memory and cognition. A new honey bee study provides support for this in relation to the effects of aging on the brain, and suggests that this principle extends across the animal kingdom.
I’ve reported before on the evidence suggesting that carriers of the ‘Alzheimer’s gene’, APOE4, tend to have smaller brain volumes and perform worse on cognitive tests, despite being cognitively ‘normal’.
How Memory Works
Here’s an intriguing approach to the long-standing debate about gender differences in spatial thinking. The study involved 1,279 adults from two cultural groups in India. One of these groups was patrilineal, the other matrilineal.
A new perspective on learning comes from a study in which 18 volunteers had to push a series of buttons as fast as possible, developing their skill over three sessions. New analytical techniques were then used to see which regions of the brain were active at the same time.
Most memory research has concerned itself with learning over time, but many memories, of course, become fixed in our mind after only one experience. The mechanism by which we acquire knowledge from single events is not well understood, but a new study sheds some light on it.
Study Skills
A study involving 60 undergraduate students confirms the value of even a single instance of retrieval practice in an everyday setting, and also confirms the value of cues for peripheral details, which are forgotten more readily.
A small study that compared teaching Spanish-speaking children English vocabulary using a song or a spoken poem has found definite and long-term advantages to the song form.
In a series of experiments involving college students, drawing pictures was found to be the best strategy for remembering lists of words.
Lifestyle
In a large Mayo Clinic study, self-reported diet was found to be significantly associated with the risk of seniors developing mild cognitive impairment or dementia over a four-year period.
I’ve reported before on the growing evidence that metabolic syndrome in middle and old age is linked to greater risk of cognitive impairment in old age and faster decline.
A large long-running New Zealand study has found that people who started using cannabis in adolescence and continued to use it for years afterward showed a significant decline in IQ from age 13 to 38. This was true even in those who hadn’t smoked marijuana for some years.