Strategies

An intriguing new study has found that people are more likely to remember specific information if the pattern of activity in their brain is similar each time they study that information.

Following a monkey study that found training in spatial memory could raise females to the level of males, and human studies suggesting the video games might help reduce gender differences in spatial processing (see below for these), a new study shows that training in spatial skills can eliminate

On the subject of the benefits of walking for seniors, it’s intriguing to note a recent pilot study that found frail seniors who walked slowly (no faster than one meter per second) benefited from a brain fitness program known as Mindfit.

No big surprise, surely: a new study has found that computers do not magically improve students’ study skills — they tend to study online material using the same techniques they would use with traditional texts. Which means, it appears, poor strategies.

There’s been a lot of discussion, backed by some evidence, that groups are ‘smarter’ than the individuals in them, that groups make better decisions than individuals. But it is not, of course, as simple as that, and a recent study speaks to the limits of this principle.

Why are other people’s phone conversations so annoying? A new study suggests that hearing only half a conversation is more distracting than other kinds of conversations because we're missing the other side of the story and so can't predict the flow of the conversation.

A number of studies have demonstrated that negative stereotypes (such as “women are bad at math”) can impair performance in tests. Now a new study shows that this effect extends to learning. The study involved learning to recognize target Chinese characters among sets of two or four.

Context is important for memory. Therefore it’s not surprising that shifting your mind’s focus to another context can impair recall — or help you forget.

While brain training programs can certainly improve your ability to do the task you’re practicing, there has been little evidence that this transfers to other tasks. In particular, the holy grail has been very broad transfer, through improvement in working memory.

A rat study demonstrates how specialized brain training can reverse many aspects of normal age-related cognitive decline in targeted areas. The month-long study involved daily hour-long sessions of intense auditory training targeted at the primary auditory cortex.