Summaries | Headlines

Possible Genetic Link To Schizophrenia Identified (February 9, 2007) -- Several neurological and psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, are associated with changes in the brain that affect nerves that communicate with each other using dopamine. One protein that ... > full story

'Missing Link' In Process Leading To Alzheimer's Disease Identified (February 9, 2007) -- Scientists at the University of Virginia have identified what appears to be a major missing link in the process that destroys nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease, an incurable disease that slowly ... > full story

Decision-making: Demonstration Of Link Between Cognition And Execution (February 9, 2007) -- For the first time, researchers have revealed the existence of an interaction at the cellular level between cognitive information and motor information. This discovery provides the missing link ... > full story

Children's Sleep Problems Can Lead To School Problems (February 8, 2007) -- Although it is known that children with sleep difficulties are likely to have school difficulties, new research reveals that this connection between sleep and school performance is related to a ... > full story

Students Who Believe Intelligence Can Be Developed Perform Better (February 7, 2007) -- Two studies that followed junior high students have demonstrated that students who believe intelligence can be developed may improve their math achievement. In each study, which each involved two ... > full story

Loneliness Associated With Increased Risk Of Alzheimer's Disease (February 7, 2007) -- Lonely individuals may be twice as likely to develop the type of dementia linked to Alzheimer's disease in late life as those who are not lonely, according to a study by researchers at the Rush ... > full story

Recurrent Middle Ear Infections Can Have A Major Impact On Children's Development (February 6, 2007) -- A study by the University of Western Sydney has revealed that recurring middle ear infections in early childhood can have a detrimental impact on language and literacy skill development in later ... > full story

Prion Disease Treatable If Caught Early (February 1, 2007) -- Studies in mice have indicated that the effects of prion disease could be reversed if caught early enough. The researchers said that their findings support developing early treatments that aim to ... > full story

Learning Slows Physical Progression Of Alzheimer's Disease (January 24, 2007) -- Learning appears to slow the development of two brain lesions that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease, scientists at UC Irvine have discovered. The finding suggests that the elderly, by keeping ... > full story

Internationally Adopted Children Shed Light On How Babies Learn Language (January 19, 2007) -- Each year, about 40,000 children are adopted across national lines, primarily by families from North America and Western Europe. Although most are infants and toddlers, thousands of older children ... > full story

Neural Bottleneck Found That Thwarts Multi-tasking (January 19, 2007) -- Many people think they can safely drive while talking on their cell phones. Vanderbilt neuroscientists Paul E. Dux and René Marois have found that when it comes to handling two things at once, your ... > full story

Patients With Amnesia 'Live In The Present' (January 16, 2007) -- Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging, University College London, have shown that people with damage to the hippocampus, the area of the brain that plays a crucial role in learning ... > full story

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Aptitude -- An aptitude is an innate inborn ability to do a certain kind of work. Aptitudes may be physical or mental. Aptitude and intelligence quotient are related, and in some ways opposite, views of human ... > full article

Memory bias -- Memory biases may either enhance or impair the recall of memory, or they may alter the content of what we report remembering. There are many memory biases including the humor effect, positivity ... > full article

Cognitive psychology -- Cognitive psychology is the school of psychology that examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language. It had its foundations in the Gestalt psychology of Max ... > full article

Functional neuroimaging -- Functional neuroimaging is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure an aspect of brain function, often with a view to understanding the relationship between activity in certain brain areas and ... > full article

Cognition -- The term cognition is used in several loosely-related ways to refer to a facility for the intelligent processing of information. In psychology, it is used to refer to the mental processes of an ... > full article

Psycholinguistics -- Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. Initial forays into ... > full article

Cognitive neuroscience -- The field of cognitive neuroscience concerns the scientific study of the neural mechanisms underlying cognition and is a branch of neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience overlaps with cognitive ... > full article

Cognitive dissonance -- Cognitive dissonance is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, which can be defined as any element of knowledge, attitude, emotion, belief or value, or a goal, plan, or interest. ... > full article

Brain damage -- Brain damage or brain injury is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain damage may occur due to a wide range of conditions, illnesses, or injuries. Possible causes of widespread ... > full article

Social cognition -- Social cognition is the study of how people process social information, especially its encoding, storage, retrieval, and application to social situations. There has been much recent interest in the ... > full article

Animal cognition -- Animal cognition, or cognitive ethology, is the title given to a modern approach to the mental capacities of non human animals. It has developed out of comparative psychology, but has also been ... > full article

Cognitive bias -- A cognitive bias is any of a wide range of observer effects identified in cognitive science and social psychology including very basic statistical, social attribution, and memory errors that are ... > full article

Instructional design -- Instructional design, also known as instructional systems design, is the analysis of learning needs and systematic development of ... > full article

Mirror test -- The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness developed by Gordon Gallup Jr in 1970. The test gauges self-awareness by determining whether an animal can recognize its own reflection in a mirror as ... > full article

Memory -- Memory is the ability of the brain to store, retain, and subsequently recall information. Although traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, the late nineteenth and early ... > full article

Multi-infarct dementia -- Multi-infarct dementia, also known as vascular dementia, is a form of dementia resulting from brain damage caused by stroke or transient ischemic attacks (also known as ... > full article

Thought -- Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. Thinking involves manipulation ... > full article

Attribution theory -- Attribution theory is a field of social psychology, which was born out of the theoritical models of Fritz Heider, Harold Kelley, Edward E. Jones, and Lee Ross. Attribution theory is concerned with ... > full article

Learning disability -- In the United States and Canada, the term learning disability is used to refer to psychological and neurological conditions that affect a person's communicative capacities and potential to be taught ... > full article

Cognitive science -- Cognitive science is usually defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence. Practically every formal introduction to cognitive science stresses that it is a highly ... > full article