Understanding the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”

From Macro to Micro: A Visu­al Guide to the Brain (IEEE Spec­trum) In the human brain, high­­er-lev­­el infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing occurs in the neo­cor­tex, neur­al tis­sue that forms the out­er lay­er of the cere­bral cor­tex. In its intri­cate folds, brain cells work togeth­er to inter­pret sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion and to form thoughts and plans. The neo­cor­tex is…

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Study: Music Training Can Enhance Verbal Intelligence and Executive Function

Very inter­est­ing new study pub­lished in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence: Short-Term Music Train­ing Enhances Ver­bal Intel­li­gence and Exec­u­tive Func­tion. Abstract: Researchers have designed train­ing meth­ods that can be used to improve men­tal health and to test the effi­ca­cy of edu­ca­tion pro­grams. How­ev­er, few stud­ies have demon­strat­ed broad trans­fer from such train­ing to per­for­mance on untrained cog­ni­tive activities.…

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