scientific-research

Large study highlights the cognitive enhancement value of both higher education and lifelong learning

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Cour­tesy David Lee at The Dai­ly Californian

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UC Berke­ley study links cog­ni­tive longevi­ty to high­er edu­ca­tion (The Dai­ly Californian):

“A study led by cam­pus researchers found that high­er lev­els of edu­ca­tion are linked to lat­er ages of peak cog­ni­tive performance…The team was able to use anony­mous data gath­ered from almost 200,000 sub­scribers to Lumos­i­ty, an online cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram, whose users con­sent­ed that their results could be used for sci­en­tif­ic research. [Read more…] about Large study high­lights the cog­ni­tive enhance­ment val­ue of both high­er edu­ca­tion and life­long learning

Debate: In the field of neurostimulation, what comes first, Published Research or Patents?

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The Brain-Zap­ping Olympians (The Ringer):

“Gain­ing jacked-up phys­i­cal pow­ers from frontal-lobe-elec­tri­fy­ing head­gear sounds like a half-baked super­hero ori­gin sto­ry. It’s also a premise that ath­letes are buy­ing as real­i­ty. NBA play­ers and Olympians are wear­ing a brain-stim­u­la­tion device called Halo Sport in an attempt to trans­form into cham­pi­ons. [Read more…] about Debate: In the field of neu­rostim­u­la­tion, what comes first, Pub­lished Research or Patents?

Playing the Blame Game: Video Games Pros and Cons

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Play­ing the Blame Game
– Video games stand accused of caus­ing obe­si­ty, vio­lence, and lousy grades. But new research paints a sur­pris­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed and pos­i­tive pic­ture, reports Greater Good Mag­a­zine’s Jere­my Adam Smith.

Cheryl Olson had seen her teenage son play video games. But like many par­ents, she did­n’t know much about them.

Then in 2004 the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice asked Olson and her hus­band, Lawrence Kut­ner, to run a fed­er­al­ly fund­ed study of how video games affect adolescents.

Olson and Kut­ner are the co-founders and direc­tors of the Har­vard Med­ical School’s Cen­ter for Men­tal Health and Media. Olson, a pub­lic health researcher, had stud­ied the effects of media on behav­ior but had nev­er exam­ined video games, either in her research or in her per­son­al life.

And so the first thing she did was watch over the shoul­der of her son, Michael, as he played his video games. Then, two years into her research—which com­bined sur­veys and focus groups of junior high school students—Michael urged her to pick up a joy­stick. “I def­i­nite­ly felt they should be famil­iar with the games if they were doing the research,” says Michael, who was 16 at the time and is now 18.

Olson start­ed with the PC game [Read more…] about Play­ing the Blame Game: Video Games Pros and Cons