Best Illusions of the Year

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Distinguishing between the brain and the mind

The default network

The observer effect

Relative size of planets to the Sun

Divided attention

We all are going to die, and that make us lucky

Impossible roof

The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual

Today, more of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another. In addition, bilingualism has positive effects at both ends of the age spectrum: Bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes, while bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline.

Musical Creativity and the Brain

On the spot, as great jazz performers expertly improvise solo passages, they make immediate decisions about which musical phrases to invent and to play. Researchers, like authors Mónica López-González and Dana Foundation grantee Charles J. Limb, are now using brain imaging to study the neural underpinnings of spontaneous artistic creativity, from jazz riffs to freestyle rap. So far, they have found that brain areas deactivated during improvisation are also at rest during dreaming and meditation, while activated areas include those controlling language and sensorimotor skills. Even with relatively few completed studies, researchers have concluded that musical creativity clearly cannot be tied to just one brain area or process.

Brain Workshop

What if a simple mental exercise could improve your memory and intelligence?

A recent study published in PNAS, an important scientific journal, shows that a memory task called dual n-back improves working memory (short term memory) andfluid intelligence. These findings are important because fluid intelligence was previously thought to be unchangeable.

Those findings have since been replicated twice with strongly positive results, and two more times in smaller studies with weaker, but still positive, results.

Brain Workshop implements this dual n-back task, and enables you to improve your working memory and fluid intelligence. The dual n-back task involves remembering a sequence of spoken letters and a sequence of positions of a square at the same time, and identifying when a letter or position matches the one that appeared n trials earlier. Brain Workshop can closely replicate the conditions of the original study. In addition, it also includes optional extended game modes such as Triple N-Back andArithmetic N-Back. It also includes features such as statistics tracking, graphs and easy configurability.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the dual n-back task also enhances focus and attention and may help improve the symptoms of ADHD/ADD.

Brain Workshop works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.

Since its initial release in August 2008, Brain Workshop has been downloaded over 384,000 times!

New to the Dual N-Back phenomenon?

• See this Wired article for an introduction to the Dual N-Back exercise and its benefits.
• Read the original research paper by Jaeggi, et al. (2008).
• Learn how to play by reading this quick tutorial.
• Download the software.

We welcome the use of Brain Workshop for experimental research. Please contact us to discuss this possibility.

Sun Montage - SOHO NASA Solar Flare X-Flare Comet

Site » http://PHJ.CA | NASA solar data & simulations from 1998+ I compiled and edited. Also, my Black Hole Montage: http://www.youtube.com/v/VvhimW97Kj4 & my Star Scale Montage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bov9M2gEgcE

Produced by PHJ.