Kinsanity

Strokes are areas of damage in the brain caused by blocked blood vessels or bleeding. They can set off a host of problems, including paralysis or impaired vision. Cognitive and behavioral changes after stroke are common yet often overlooked because the effects may be subtle.

Summary from Learning & the Brain Society Newsletter - January 2015

Playing music to improve children's brains 

University of Vermont

A University of Vermont College of Medicine child psychiatry team has published new research in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Matthew Albaugh, Ph.D., and graduate student research assistant Eileen Crehan, call their study "the largest investigation of the association between playing a musical instrument and brain development." The research continues Hudziak's work with the National Institutes of Health Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Study of Normal Brain Development. Using its database, the team analyzed the brain scans of 232 children ages 6 to 18. What they found is that musical training might also help kids focus their attention, control their emotions and diminish their anxiety. 

EVANSTON, Ill. --- America’s preoccupation with the “word gap”— the idea that parents in impoverished homes speak less to their children, which, in turn, predicts outcomes like school achievement and income later in life — has skyrocketed in recent years, leading to a rise in educational initiatives aiming to narrow the achievement gap by teaching young children more words.

In a forthcoming article titled “Listen Up! Speech Is for Thinking During Infancy,” to be published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Northwestern University psychologist Sandra Waxman and New York University’s Athena Vouloumanos broaden the scope of this issue by assessing the impact of human speech on infant cognition in the first year of life.

“It’s not because [children] have low vocabularies that they fail to achieve later on. That’s far too simple,” said Waxman, the Louis W. Menk Chair in Psychology, a professor of cognitive psychology and a fellow in the University’s Institute for Policy Research. “The vocabulary of a child — raised in poverty or in plenty — is really an index of the larger context in which language participates.”

Consequently, Vouloumanos advocates speaking to infants, not only “because it will teach them more words,” she said, but because “listening to speech promotes the babies’ acquisition of the fundamental cognitive and social psychological capacities that form the foundation for subsequent learning.” 

Summary from Learning & the Brain Society Newsletter - January 2015

Human speech has consequences for infants that go beyond learning words  

Northwestern University

An article published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Northwestern University psychologist Sandra Waxman and New York University's Athena Vouloumanos reveal from a series of new findings the surprising impact of human speech on infant cognition in the first year; listening to speech promotes much more than language-learning alone. Vouloumanos emphasizes speaking to infants, not only "because it will teach them more words," she said, but because "listening to speech promotes the babies' acquisition of the fundamental cognitive and social psychological capacities that form the foundation for subsequent learning."

Report cards are coming home, and a good number of parents are worried that their child seems to be showing signs of a learning disability. Their concern is well founded; learning disabilities including A.D.H.D. and dyslexia affect 20% of our students and less than half get the attention they need. That is a large community, in fact, the largest minority in the country. For these kids, often the day is longer, the challenge greater, the work harder. Unless we identify and assist them, the national cost in human potential and hard dollars will be tremendous.

Kids with learning disabilities drop out ten times more frequently than others in high school, and are much more likely to use drugs and get involved in our jail system. The impact when this large a social group fails is felt by all of us.

A learning problem is not an intelligence problem -- these children are smart, creative, and capable. They can and do learn; however, they think differently, access and process information in an atypical way. That is where opportunity lies, and where we are falling far short.

Planning to read in bed tonight? It may be better to read from a printed book instead of an e-book reader.

Mad In America provides news, resources, blogs, forums and a community for people interested in critically re-thinking mental health care in the US and abroad.

Using a new method called isotropic fractionator, a group of researchers has found biological evidence that may explain the superior olfactory abilities that women have over men.

New research suggests that curiosity triggers chemical changes in the brain that help students better understand and retain information.