• When Gazing Into Nothing Helps Us Remember

    By lmunoz | December 23, 2013 | Comments Off on When Gazing Into Nothing Helps Us Remember

    Trying to remember how you arranged last year’s Christmas ornaments on the tree? It turns out that blankly gazing at your empty tree could help. According to a new study, when we look even at an empty space, it cues our brain to remember the orientation of objects that previously occupied that space. Our eye […]

  • When We See But Don’t See: Using Illusions to Test Our Perceptions

    By lmunoz | December 13, 2013 | Comments Off on When We See But Don’t See: Using Illusions to Test Our Perceptions

    If you are driving home from work listening to a song on the radio or talking to your spouse in the car, you may miss other things happening around you – like a giant display of Christmas trees for sale or even a car on fire on a nearby street. Even if you traveled pass […]

  • Holiday Blues? Identifying Markers for Anxiety in the Brain

    By lmunoz | December 5, 2013 | Comments Off on Holiday Blues? Identifying Markers for Anxiety in the Brain

    We hear a lot about anxiety and depression around the holidays – people feeling lonely and far from family or overloaded with stress. Although we may think of anxiety and depression separately, they often go hand in hand. Scientists are now working to better understand the different types of anxiety people experience, and a new […]

  • Why We So Often Blame the Person and Not the Situation

    By lmunoz | November 20, 2013 | Comments Off on Why We So Often Blame the Person and Not the Situation

    When someone cuts you off in traffic, some choice words probably instantly spring to mind about the driver. You assume the person is either a bad driver, inconsiderate, rude, or worse. But what if it turns out the driver was in a hurry because his wife has just gone into labor with their first child? […]

  • Detection of Light in Blind People Illuminates Light’s Non-Visual Roles

    By lmunoz | November 9, 2013 | Comments Off on Detection of Light in Blind People Illuminates Light’s Non-Visual Roles

    We can detect light even if we cannot see it. And in a startling new discovery, even some totally blind people can detect light. Brief exposure to blue light triggered brain activity associated with alertness and attention – helping scientists further understand light’s role in cognition for all people. “The eye plays a dual role […]

  • Pennies for Treats: Dieting Through Brain Training

    By lmunoz | October 26, 2013 | Comments Off on Pennies for Treats: Dieting Through Brain Training

    What’s the first treat you pull out of your candy bag on Halloween? Probably your favorite guilty pleasure… but what if you could use pennies to train yourself to pick a candy you might not like the most but that might be healthier? A new study finds that we may be able to train our […]

  • Sleeping for Learning: How Children and Adults Maximize Their Memory Potential

    By lmunoz | October 10, 2013 | Comments Off on Sleeping for Learning: How Children and Adults Maximize Their Memory Potential

    It’s not quantity but quality that matters when it comes to how much sleep strengthens our memories. A growing body of research is finding that specific stages of sleep shape particular types of learning in the brain. Whether for children napping or for older adults catching z’s at night, we all rely on sleep to […]

  • Musings on Consciousness, Technology and Bioethics: Q&A with Adrian Owen

    By lmunoz | October 1, 2013 | Comments Off on Musings on Consciousness, Technology and Bioethics: Q&A with Adrian Owen

    “Surely, if we are going to make judgments about whether people should be kept or alive or allowed to die after serious brain injury, it’s better if the people themselves are involved in that decision-making process, rather than others – doctors, relatives, etc. – being entirely responsible for making that decision for them.” Breakthroughs in […]

  • Boost Your Brain with Aerobic Exergames

    By lmunoz | September 24, 2013 | Comments Off on Boost Your Brain with Aerobic Exergames

    Q&A with Cay Anderson-Hanley “While exercise does not appear to be a cure-all, it is one of the strongest tools that we individually can enlist in our fight against cognitive decline and diseases of many types.” Playing video games that double as exercise can reap mental benefits above and beyond traditional exercise. In a recent […]

  • Navigation and Recall: Why There Are Some Places We Just Can’t Forget

    By lmunoz | September 10, 2013 | Comments Off on Navigation and Recall: Why There Are Some Places We Just Can’t Forget

    Even for those of us navigationally challenged, we may have vivid memories of exactly where we once saw a bad accident or a deer on the side of the road. These negative experiences boost our recall of places, according to new research. As a result, the very places we may want to forget are the […]

Heading 1

Heading 2

Paragraph text