cognition
13 stories tagged "cognition"
Your Aging Brain May Be Swapping Details for Wisdom. Nobody Has Measured the Wisdom.
Three neuroscientists argue that midlife forgetting is the brain shifting toward meaning. Older studies document the lost detail and the confident false memories that come with it. The promised wisdom has never been measured.
Nutrition & FoodAn Oil Mill's Soy Emulsifier Protected Salt-Fed Mice's Memory
Salt-fed mice got worse at remembering objects and lost interest in each other. A soy lipid blunted both, in a study a food-ingredient maker helped start and fund.
Brain & AgingAfter 30 Hours Awake, a 20-Minute Bike Ride Saved About as Much Memory as a 90-Minute Nap
Sleepless volunteers who cycled for 20 minutes recognized nearly as many photos three days later as those given a 90-minute nap, even though the ride left their fatigue markers right where they were.
Brain & AgingUnder Propofol, the Hippocampus Still Sorts Nouns From Verbs and Leans Toward the Next Word
Recordings from 651 neurons in seven anesthetized patients show the hippocampus learning tones and tracking word meaning, and a German trial suggests that what reaches those ears can change how much opioid a patient needs afterward.
Nutrition & FoodForget You Ate Lunch and You'll Eat Another One: Your Memory Center Helps Run Your Appetite
Two amnesic patients ate a second full lunch minutes after the first. Rats with silenced meal-memory neurons came back to eat sooner. In healthy young adults, one week of waffles and fast food dulled both word recall and the normal drop in food craving after a full breakfast.
Brain & AgingUSC Scanned 459 Aging Brains Across India. The Wiring Just Under the Cortex, Not the Gray Matter, Tracked Who Stayed Sharp.
In 459 older adults across India, healthier short-range wiring just beneath the cortex was tied to a weaker link between gray matter loss and cognition, and the tie was strongest in people with the least schooling.
Brain & AgingChronic Money Trouble Showed Up on the Brain Scans, Decades Later
In a British cohort followed since birth, people who spent years in the bottom fifth of income had weaker verbal memory by their fifties and larger brain ventricles, a marker of brain aging, by their seventies, even after childhood and education were accounted for.
Brain & AgingThe Vitamin D Trials That Found No Brain Benefit Never Tested This Dose
Fifty-four older adults with failing sleep and early memory loss, and the ones taking 5,000 IU of vitamin D a day scored 13 percent higher on a standard cognitive test. The major null trials never tested that dose.
Brain & AgingBanned in 1979, 'Legacy' PCBs Are Now Tied to Shorter Telomeres in Children
Dioxin-like PCBs left American factories decades ago and never left children's bodies. New research traces how they may erode the protective caps on kids' chromosomes, and may help explain lower cognitive scores.
Brain & AgingThe Box-and-Banana Test Was Built for Apes. A Bumble Bee Worked It Out on Its Own.
Researchers in Finland trained bumble bees on two unrelated facts, a flower with sugar and a ball that rolls. With the flower moved out of reach, the bees combined the two into a solution nobody had shown them, on a task built for apes.
Brain & AgingThey Told Older Adults the Pill Was Fake. Their Memory Got Better Anyway.
A 90-person Italian trial gave older adults inert pills and told one group flat-out they were fake. That group improved as much as the deceived one. Here is what that does and doesn't prove.
Brain & AgingUltra-Processed Food Is Quietly Taxing Your Attention. The Mediterranean Salad Next to It Won't Pay the Bill.
A new Monash-led study finds ultra-processed foods track with worse attention and a higher dementia-risk score even after adjusting for Mediterranean diet quality. The biology of why is more interesting than the headlines admit.
Brain & AgingBrain Gains Into Your 90s Are Probably Real. The Index Measuring Them Has a Patent Pending.
A three-year UT Dallas study tracking nearly 4,000 adults to age 94 says brain function can climb at any age. The biology is plausible. The catch is that the people measuring the gain are the same people patenting the yardstick.