Study examines common cognitive biases (have you tried this brain teaser?) and ways to mitigate them

A fas­ci­nat­ing new study, Tver­sky and Kahneman’s Cog­ni­tive Illu­sions: Who Can Solve Them, and Why?, probes into the cog­ni­tive “heuris­tics and bias­es” researched by Daniel Kah­ne­man and Amos Tver­sky since the late 1960s. If you have nev­er encoun­tered the “Lin­da brain teas­er” before, please give it a try: Lin­da is 31 years old, sin­gle, out­spo­ken, and very…

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A few brain teasers to flex those cognitive muscles over the weekend

Look around you, wher­ev­er you are, and find three green things that may fit in your pock­ets, and three red objects that are clear­ly too big to fit. Done? OK, now you have six objects. Go ahead and say their names in alpha­bet­i­cal order.  Done? Now name them in reverse alpha­bet­i­cal order. Done? Now count the total number…

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Higher body mass index (BMI) linked to lower blood supply to the brain in large neuroimaging study

Body weight has sur­pris­ing, alarm­ing impact on brain func­tion (Sci­ence Dai­ly): As a per­son­’s weight goes up, all regions of the brain go down in activ­i­ty and blood flow, accord­ing to a new brain imag­ing study in the Jour­nal of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease … sci­en­tists ana­lyzed over 35,000 func­tion­al neu­roimag­ing scans using sin­­gle-pho­­ton emis­sion com­put­er­ized tomog­ra­phy (SPECT) from…

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Large study finds that placebo works as well as vitamin D supplements to prevent depression and improve mood

Large Study Con­firms Vit­a­min D Does Not Reduce Risk of Depres­sion in Adults (Mass Gen­er­al press release): Vit­a­min D sup­ple­men­ta­tion does not pro­tect against depres­sion in mid­­dle-age or old­er adult­hood accord­ing results from one of the largest ever stud­ies of its kind … “There was no sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit from the sup­ple­ment for this pur­pose. It…

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Five quick brain teasers to flex those Attention and Working Memory mental muscles

. Look­ing for some fun cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion to kick­start the week? Below you’ll find a few brain teasers to chal­lenge your atten­tion and your work­ing mem­ory–the abil­ity to keep infor­ma­tion in your mind while manip­u­lat­ing mul­ti­ple units of infor­ma­tion at the same time. Give them a try … they are not as easy as they may sound :-)

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Study: Having ADHD costs $1.1 million in lower lifetime earnings, even when “treated”

 Rel­a­tive­ly few stud­ies have exam­ined the impact of child­hood ADHD on long-term finan­cial out­comes, even though becom­ing self-sup­­port­ing and attain­ing finan­cial inde­pen­dence is an impor­tant devel­op­men­tal task. An espe­cial­ly com­pre­hen­sive look at this issue is pro­vid­ed in a study by Pel­ham et al pub­lished recent­ly in the Jour­nal of Con­sult­ing and Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy. The Study: Participants…

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