My favorite breakfast!
Here is what we are reading today:
“If you happen to be visiting the Miyagi Prefecture of Japan and you love foxes you are in luck. There is a sanctuary full of free-roaming and surprisingly friendly foxes that are waiting to play.
The Zao Fox Village features six varieties of foxes including silver, platinum, and red. “
“Nintendo fans have all the more reason to sign up for Netflix. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is in the process of developing a new live-action series based on The Legend of Zelda. The series is reportedly in early stages, as the streaming company courts writers, but sources say Netflix wants it to resemble Game of Thrones but with a more family-friendly tone.”
“Educational Resources in Neuroscience(ERIN) is a unique portal for the neuroscience community – an easy-to-use, comprehensive source of educational materials to enhance teaching and learning in neuroscience. Search nearly a thousand high-quality resources identified and reviewed by SfN members.
Open Call for Submissions! Share your resources with SfN’s ERIN community by February 28, 2015. Submissions can range from textbooks, video clips, presentations, syllabi, lab projects and exercises, articles, and more. All submissions will be reviewed by members of Committee on Neuroscience Departments and Programs prior to publication. If you have any questions, contact ndp@sfn.org.”
“Whether you’re taking a test or walking your dog across a busy street, your ability to tune out irrelevant sights and sounds in the environment — or your openness to detecting potential dangers — is crucial for success and survival.
Duke University researchers have looked into monkeys’ eyes for insight into how the brain processes distractions and they’ve found that changes to pupil size in response to distractors might predict how well the brain focuses on a goal.”
“Ed Wasserman, UI professor of psychology and corresponding author of the study, says the finding suggests a similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do.
“Unlike prior attempts to teach words to primates, dogs, and parrots, we used neither elaborate shaping methods nor social cues,” Wasserman says of the study, published online in the journal Cognition. “And our pigeons were trained on all 16 categories simultaneously, a much closer analog of how children learn words and categories.”
“If you’ve been bugging your boss for a treadmill desk — because you know, of course, that sitting is killing us — here’s a vital piece of information to add to your arsenal. It isn’t just an investment in your health, but an investment in your brainpower.
People who use the walking workstations see a significant boost in memory recall, even after having used them at a relatively relaxed pace for a short length of time. That’s according to a study published in the latest edition of the journal Computers in Human Behavior”
7 Comments
kmmcnult · February 16, 2015 at 11:14 am
I thought the study on how eyes reveal the brain’s focus was fascinating. In a lot of my bio classes we learn how you use your eye, and why we can actually see, but I have never heard of the size of the pupils being a mechanism for brain focus and be able to change in size depending on the task. The most interesting part of the article wasn’t the conflicting signals found in the monkeys that were only active when monkey’s were doing the tasks and trying to override the distracting faces, but that their pupils themselves would actually change in size to compensate for the difficulty of tasks. The only previous reasons I knew the pupils changed in size were due to light and some emotional responses. The idea that the pupil size will change due to task difficulty is something that is very interesting to me, and would enjoy learning more about it. Hopefully more studies are being done.
smorri07 · February 17, 2015 at 9:44 am
The article concerning the connection between eyes and brain focus was extremely interesting, especially considering present day changes to how we are using our eyes compared to past patterns. For example the research done using monkey’s focus has a lot to to with how interactions between monkey’s and relationships are perceived and carried out. This has major implications for us today, because if we are becoming more and more multi-task oriented with less focus on what is in front of us directly, then the interactions we have and relationships we engage in with the people around us will begin to look and feel different. This may lead to an overall disconnect among people (which would only be increased by further distraction and multi-tasking, social media affects, etc. ) and could even impact psychological disorders and social well-being. If we are increasingly distracted from the world around us, and our eyes even show it, then there may be an overall disconnect and even depressing result from drawing our attention to new lengths.
rspatric · February 21, 2015 at 1:29 pm
I read the links about the fox sanctuary and the new Zelda tv series. This might not have much to do with psychology, but I have to say I’m stoked about Zelda. I am a software engineering student with a psychology minor, and there is a lot more psychology that goes into video games than people realize. I want to get more involved with this and subjects involving human and computer interaction. Video games are vastly popular in today’s society, and this excites me because game companies not only hire programmers to write code for games, but also psychologists to help design them. The game Portal, for example, is all about solving puzzles and riddles, and it was designed by psychologists. Zelda is another puzzle solving game. I think it’s great Netflix is making a tv series, and I’m excited to see how it will turn out!
achris06 · February 21, 2015 at 2:06 pm
The study on treadmill desks and memory recall is an exciting finding to me. As a college student, it is difficult to find the time to get enough exercise each week, and it is very frustrating. Most of my time is spend stimulating my brain, when barely any time is spent on physically challenging my body, which I think is crucial to one’s health. It is important to lead a balanced lifestyle where one is bettering both the mind and body on a daily basis, but this is very difficult for college students. I have always wondered, “What if you could do both at the same time?”. For example, studying flashcards while walking, or listening to ebooks while riding a bike. I myself have never tried this, as I thought I would be too distracted by the environment to actually absorb any information, but this new study has convinced me to give it a try. The benefit of getting exercise while studying is enough to pull me in, but the fact that it also may boost memory recall is even more of a reason to give it a try!
jwatso02 · February 26, 2015 at 12:03 pm
My sister (who is studying to become a bird vet) has a green check conure parrot, who is very intelligent and able to identify objects very well. He is named Bo after detective Columbo and I’m proud to say he breaks all the “bird brain” stereotypes! I think it’s fascinating that pigeons are capable of associating an icon with an object, and perhaps more impressively, understanding that objects belong in categories. I think a credit to their intelligence is the fact that they were able to carry this new knowledge over to new categories. The survival of birds depends largely on their ability to recognize many objects quickly since they are receiving so much visual input all at once, and need to categorize objects as being a threat or not.
The treadmill study has me seriously thinking about the logistics of how I could combine light exercise with studying. I have heard that positive memories contain more contextual detail and seeing as how exercise increases endorphins, I wonder if this is a component to the findings. I can imagine similar effects in boosting memory could be produced with other kinds of exercise as well, or simply taking a walk in between working.
efike · March 10, 2015 at 6:13 pm
I found the treadmill article to be very interesting. I’m curious if the difference in performance is due to exercising in general or specifically to exercising while studying. I’ve always held the motto that exercising helps reduce stress and make me more focused on the work i’ll be doing later that day. However, I have very rarely exercised and done schoolwork at the same time – the only time i’ve done this is reading while riding a stationary bike. I would be curious to see a study that compares memory tasks of people who walked on the treadmill while learning the material versus people who ran on the treadmill and then learned the material afterwards. I also would like to learn about other possible advantages to doing work while walking on a treadmill, such as better posture (since people sometimes have poor posture while sitting at desks) and better health in the workplace in general.
elliehirahara · March 10, 2015 at 10:24 pm
I have actually been to the Miyagi Prefecture in Japan and was able to personally experience the foxes roaming around the park. It is such a fun and new experience that everyone who enters the Prefecture would enjoy. All the foxes are extremely friendly and get very excited when people arrive. There are also certain areas in Japan where deers roam a certain neighborhood. You can buy certain foods at the market and feed them as well.