Study finds that playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial for children than other forms of screentime (social media, watching videos/ TV)

Many par­ents feel guilty when their chil­dren play video games for hours on end. Some even wor­ry it could make their chil­dren less clever. And, indeed, that’s a top­ic sci­en­tists have clashed over for years. In our new study, we inves­ti­gat­ed how video games affect the minds of chil­dren, inter­view­ing and test­ing more than 5,000 children…

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Large study to study impact on early brain development of financial assistance to low-income mothers

___ Does grow­ing up poor harm brain devel­op­ment? (The Econ­o­mist): “Plen­ty of evi­dence sug­gests that grow­ing up poor, liv­ing through these kinds of scrapes, has a detri­men­tal impact on child devel­op­ment. Chil­dren from rich fam­i­lies tend to have bet­ter lan­guage and mem­o­ry skills than those from poor fam­i­lies. More afflu­ent chil­dren usu­al­ly per­form bet­ter in…

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14 new Speakers, including Rutger’s April Benasich and EMOTIV’s Olivier Oullier, at the 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit (December 5–7th)

Proud to announce excel­lent addi­tions to the stel­lar Speak­er Ros­ter at the upcom­ing 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Health & Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th). As direc­tor of the Infan­cy Stud­ies Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Rut­gers Cen­ter for Mol­e­c­u­lar and Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science,  Dr. April Bena­sich’s research focus­es on brain devel­op­ment in infan­cy and early…

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Study: Is modernity leading to a growing Cognitive Divide?

— Has Mod­ern Expe­ri­ence Changed The Human Brain? (NPR): “The brain has evolved over evo­lu­tion­ary time scales of mil­lions of years. So, what is the like­li­hood that the rel­a­tive­ly recent advent of read­ing and writ­ing, or motor­ized trans­port, or the Inter­net, could have changed our brains?

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Study: Parents’ educational and income levels (not breastfeeding per se) account for the brain development gains in breastfed children

Study shows no long-term cog­ni­tive ben­e­fit to breast­feed­ing (CNN): “While the med­ical ben­e­fits of breast­feed­ing for help­ing new­borns fight infec­tions and help­ing pre-term infants get stronger are fair­ly well estab­lished, the long-term impact is much less so…a new study pub­lished in the jour­nal Pedi­atrics finds that breast­feed­ing has lit­tle impact on long-term cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment and…

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How to Optimize Brain Health at Any Age

How to Opti­mize Brain Health at Any Age from Sharp­Brains Pre­sen­ta­tion deliv­ered by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez at the Van­cou­ver JCC, on Novem­ber 3rd, host­ed by Eaton Arrow­smith. Descrip­tion: Just like the rest of our body, the brain requires care, atten­tion and prop­er exer­cise. Yet, we often ignore this most vital organ because few know where to…

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