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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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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Marshmallow Test with a twist: 3- and 4‑year-olds kids display more self-control when their reputation is at stake

Chil­dren Will Wait to Impress Others—Another Twist on the Clas­sic Marsh­mal­low Test (Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence): If you asked peo­ple to name a famous psy­chol­o­gy study, the “marsh­mal­low test” would prob­a­bly come out near the top of the list. In this task, young chil­dren are told they can imme­di­ate­ly get a small reward (one marshmallow)…

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Seven evidence-based reasons to start meditating yesterday

Yes, start­ing today is OK too. I start­ed med­i­tat­ing soon after 9/11. I was liv­ing in Man­hat­tan, an already chaot­ic place, at an extreme­ly chaot­ic time. I real­ized I had no con­trol over my exter­nal envi­ron­ment. But the one place I did have a say over was my mind, through med­i­ta­tion. When I start­ed med­i­tat­ing, I…

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Best predictor of sustained weight-loss? Prefrontal cortex activation

_____ New research sug­gests that high­­er-lev­­el brain func­tions have a major role in los­ing weight. In a study among 24 par­tic­i­pants at a weight-loss clin­ic, those who achieved great­est suc­cess in terms of weight loss demon­strat­ed more activ­i­ty in the brain regions of the lat­er­al pre­frontal cor­tex asso­ci­at­ed with self-control.

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Mindfulness or Mind Control at Work?

  There’s a back­lash brew­ing against mind­ful­ness at work. “Cor­po­ra­tions have jumped on the mind­ful­ness band­wag­on because it con­ve­nient­ly shifts the bur­den onto the indi­vid­ual employ­ee,” write Ron Purs­er and David Loy in the Huff­in­g­ton Post. “Stress is framed as a per­son­al prob­lem, and mind­ful­ness is offered as just the right med­i­cine to help employ­ees work…

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