Reading for pleasure during childhood may lead to higher brain/ cognitive development and mental well-being during adolescence

Ear­ly child­hood is a crit­i­cal peri­od for brain devel­op­ment, which is impor­tant for boost­ing cog­ni­tion and men­tal well­be­ing. Good brain health at this age is direct­ly linked to bet­ter men­tal heath, cog­ni­tion and edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment in ado­les­cence and adult­hood. It can also pro­vide resilience in times of stress. But, sad­ly, brain devel­op­ment can be hampered…

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Landmark study on neural circuits shows that “cells that fire together wire together,” refining the popular “Use it or lose it”

Research on largest net­work of cor­ti­cal neu­rons to date pro­filed (Med­ical Xpress): “Even the sim­plest net­works of neu­rons in the brain are com­posed of mil­lions of con­nec­tions, and exam­in­ing these vast net­works is crit­i­cal to under­stand­ing how the brain works. An inter­na­tion­al team of researchers

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On Music, Dopamine, and Making Sense of Sound

Daniel Lev­itin, in This Is Your Brain On Music, sug­gests the fol­low­ing sound exper­i­ment. Sit­u­ate your­self some­place where you can close your eyes and focus on the sounds around you. When you open your eyes, write down each sound you heard and the object that made that sound. If you are in a rel­a­tive­ly quiet…

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Encyclopedia of the many Sharp Brains out there

A Leap for All Life: World’s Lead­ing Sci­en­tists Announce Cre­ation of Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life (a data­base of all liv­ing things) Press Release: Bio­di­ver­si­ty, Sci­ence Com­mu­ni­ties Unite Behind Epic Effort To Pro­mote Bio­di­ver­si­ty, Doc­u­ment All 1.8 Mil­lion Named Species on Plan­et WASHINGTON (May 9, 2007) – Many of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tions today announced the…

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