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New Insight Into Aging Brains
The Wall Street Journal: Nearly a quarter of the changes often seen in a person's intelligence level over the course of a lifetime may be due to genes, a proportion never before estimated, new research shows. The study suggests that genes may partly explain why some people's brains age better than others, even though environmental factors likely play a greater role over a lifetime. Understanding the factors behind healthy mental aging has become an increasingly vital one for societies with large elderly populations. However, it isn't an easy task. Read the full story: The Wall Street Journal
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New Research From Psychological Science
Overcoming the Negative Consequences of Interference From Recognition Memory Testing Kenneth J. Malmberg, Amy H. Criss, Tarun H. Gangwani, and Richard M. Shiffrin Researchers have found that the more people are tested the worse their ability to recall and recognize past information becomes. This phenomenon is known as output interference. In this study participants were presented with words from two different categories, and were tested on their memory for the words. The words were tested in either a random order, in two large-blocks by category, or in alternating short-blocks by category.
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When Making Meaning of the World, the Brain is a Multi-tasker
How does the brain confer meaning on the things we perceive in the world? “Many of us favor the theory that, whether it comes in through the eyes or ears, through reading [or other stimuli], it’s all eventually arriving at a common place where the meaning of things is represented,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologist Mary C. Potter. “If that were so,” she continues, “you’d expect there to be a problem in extracting meanings simultaneously from different sources.” That is why Potter and her MIT colleague Ansgar D.
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Neuroscience Pioneer Will Speak at APS Convention
Imagine waking up every morning for 50 years without any recollection of what you had done or whom you had met the day before. Henry Gustaf Molaison — known only as HM prior to his death in 2008 — experienced this degree of amnesia after a brain surgery in 1953 that cured his epilepsy but destroyed his ability to form new memories. APS Fellow and Charter Member Brenda Milner is widely recognized for her work with HM. Milner, who is considered one of the most important neuroscientists of the 20th century, will be speaking about her career with social psychologist and writer Carol Tavris at the 24th APS Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
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Le pouvoir leur a monté à la taille!
Slate France: L’histoire ne manque pas d’exemples de personnages de petite taille (au sens propre) ayant exercé de grands pouvoirs. Lénine mesurait 1m65 comme Charlot, Louis XIV 1m62 (*) comme Beethoven, Mozart et Benoit XVI, Voltaire 1m60, Balzac 1m57, Jean-Paul Sartre 1m52, Jeanne d’Arc 1m50, Edith Piaf 1m42… Ces tailles, listées sur des sites comme Astrotheme, sont très souvent contestées. C’est le cas de celle de Nicolas Sarkozy. Donnée à 1m62 sur certains sites, elle est estimée à 1m68 par Astrotheme et à 1m65 dans un article du magazine Science du 12 janvier 2012 qui fait référence à une étude parue par la revue Psychological Science. Métaphore du pouvoir Michelle M.
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Made with love actually tastes better: study
New Zealand Herald: Convinced nothing can beat your mum's Sunday roast or grandmother's apple pie? You're probably right. Food that we believe has been prepared with tender loving care always tastes better, according to scientists. So if your friends and family constantly impress you with their culinary delights, it probably says as much about your relationship with them as it does about their prowess in the kitchen. Researchers looking into human experience found that our experience of a physical sensation, such as taste, is affected by how we perceive the person administering it.