Some friends of ours are up in Alaska working the sled dog races. “Someone” photo shopped this picture to ask if he was disqualified because of an unorthodox sled?
Here is what I am reading today:
“A team of French researchers has discovered that the human brain is capable of distinguishing between different types of syllables as early as three months prior to full term birth. As they describe in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team found via brain scans that babies born up to three months premature are capable of some language processing.”
“A democracy relies on an electorate of critical thinkers. Yet formal education, which is driven by test taking, is increasingly failing to require students to ask the kind of questions that lead to informed decisions.
More than a decade ago cognitive scientists John D. Bransford and Daniel L. Schwartz, both then at Vanderbilt University, found that what distinguished young adults from children was not the ability to retain facts or apply prior knowledge to a new situation but a quality they called “preparation for future learning.””
“With a major boost from the hit sci-fi series “Star Trek,” one of Pluto’s newly-discovered moons may be named “Vulcan” —that is, if it keeps its lead over some 30,000 other entries. Vulcan is the Roman god of lava and smoke and the nephew of Pluto, but many people know it as the homeworld of Spock, the pointy-eared sidekick of USS Enterprise captain James Kirk. The two new moons were discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2011 and 2012. NBC News said the voting is to conclude at noon Eastern Time on Monday.”
“The research, led by Professor Joydeep Bhattacharya in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, examined what it is about the brain that defines someone as a ‘good learner’ from those who do not learn from their mistakes. Professor Bhattacharya said: “We are always told how important it is to learn from our errors, our experiences, but is this true? If so, then why do we all not learn from our experiences in the same way? It seems some people rarely do, even when they were informed of their errors in repeated attempts. “This study presents a first tantalising insight into how our brain processes the performance feedback and what it does with this information, whether to learn from it or to brush it aside. “”
“It’s not clear how your health may be affected by the genetic disruption if you don’t get enough sleep. Still, the research raises the possibility that the effects of too little sleep could have long-lasting effects on your body. “If people regularly restrict their sleep, it is possible that the disruption that we see … could have an impact over time that ultimately determines their health outcomes as they age in later life,” said study co-author Simon Archer, who studies sleep at the University of Surrey, in England.”
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“”Our study found that BPA may impair the development of the central nervous system, and raises the question as to whether exposure could predispose animals and humans to neurodevelopmental disorders,” said lead author Wolfgang Liedtke, M.D., PhD, associate professor of medicine/neurology and neurobiology at Duke.”
2 Comments
ctamblin · March 15, 2013 at 3:45 pm
Response to “Lack of sleep” article:
It does not surprise me that there could be additional adverse effects to sleep deprivation. I have discovered that as I have gotten older, I am less likely to sleep less than 7 hours. My performance in school decreases and for me, it is just worth it to sleep 8 or 9 hours. Unfortunately for me, I still cannot go to sleep early, so I compensate by sleep late in the morning. It would be interesting to find some research on if there are any adverse health effects to sleeping late vs. going to bed early.
Hannah · June 5, 2013 at 10:14 pm
On “Why Not Everyone Learns from Their Mistakes”
I took a Motor Learning and Control class at the beginning of this year, and we learned that people will eventually improve their performance according to their mistakes. It is interesting to read that not all people make these cognitive and motor changes. I wonder if the experiment did not follow the participants for long enough to record actually changes, because it can take people a very long time to correct incorrect motor patterns. As the author concludes, more research is definitely needed.