Guest Post by Marc Coutanche, Yale University From a young age, we learn the differences between a lemon and a lime and dozens of other fruit, making going to a farmer’s market to shop for fruit a seemingly simple task. But despite appearances, very little is simple about holding what you want in mind, and then identifying […]
Now that we’re in the dog days of summer, I find myself imagining the perfect summer vacation – long trips to Greece, or maybe Fiji… somewhere I have never been. My imagined trips would not be complete without my memories from past trips – the feel of the breeze from the shore, happy times spent […]
Whether we like it or not, sometimes distant memories of past events pop into our heads for no apparent reason. Study after study has found that memories associated with high emotions are more likely to spontaneously come to the surface than non-emotional ones. But these memories may lack specific details – cued by familiar surroundings […]
We call it a “senior moment” – when we forget where we parked the car or left the keys. These moments of forgetfulness are so called because they tend to become more frequent with age. But all is not lost: New research suggests that senior moments have a lot to do with how we approach […]
Twitter is an increasingly powerful tool for information. In April, a hoax tweet from someone who hacked the Associated Press Twitter account caused the stock market to momentarily crash. Traders were swayed by a single false tweet about a terrorist attack on the White House. The incident begs the question of how we evaluate information […]
CNS 2014 Blog Every time I hear “Let My Love Open the Door to Your Heart” by Pete Townshend, I am instantly transported to my sister’s wedding – and it’s not just the memory of the song: I remember little details that I would otherwise never think about again, such as the colors of the […]
CNS 2014 Press Release Boston – April 8, 2014 – Babies and young children make giant developmental leaps all of the time. Sometimes, it seems, even overnight they figure out how to recognize certain shapes or what the word “no” means no matter who says it. It turns out that making those leaps could be […]
CNS 2014 Blog: Keynote Address by Suzanne Corkin Let’s test your memory: What did you eat for dinner last night? That’s an easy answer. How about what’s the capital of Paris? For most, that’s easy as well. How about this one: How do the pedals work on a bike? That one may be tougher to […]
Just smelling my mom’s homemade lasagna evokes very particular memories from my childhood – the way the kitchen looked, silly conversations with my family over dinner, an outfit that I used to wear. Because smells can so effectively help us remember, they are a powerful tool for scientists studying memory. In a new study, researchers […]
Listening to a consistent “sh” noise could boost your memory, according to new research. Such white noise changes activity in the midbrain that is linked to learning and reward pathways. Past research had suggested a link between white noise and learning in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and in people learning arithmetic. The new work, […]
