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Replay and representation dynamics in the hippocampus of freely flying bats
Cognitive functions for navigation and memory rely on emergent properties of neural ensembles in the hippocampus, such as activity replay1–5 and theta sequences6–9. Yet, whether and how these phenomena generalize across species with distinct navigational demands and neurophysiological properties remain unclear. Here, we wirelessly recorded neural activity from large populations of cells and local…
Why Learning a Foreign Language Is the Ultimate Brain Workout
It can also enrich your view of the world
For a groundbreaking 2010 study, a team of Canadian researchers explored the associations between bilingualism and Alzheimer’s disease.
At that time, it was known that socially and physically active older adults tended to enjoy a measure of protection from dementia, and the study team was interested to learn if the cognitive demands of bilingualism — the ability of speaking and understanding two or more languages — offered any similar protections.
To find out, they collected data on more than 200 people recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They found that people who spoke two or more languages developed Alzheimer’s symptoms an average of five years later in life than those who spoke only one language. This time gap persisted even after the study team controlled for occupation, education level, country of birth, and other variables. (Later follow-up work has supported these findings.)
How could bilingualism protect the brain from dementia? The study authors highlight something called “cognitive reserve,” which they describe as the capacity of the brain to maintain proper functioning despite the onslaught of disease. “[Bilingualism] appears to contribute to cognitive reserve, which acts to compensate for the effects of accumulated neuropathology,” they write.
The brain is an organ, not a muscle. But several decades of brain research have revealed that, much like a muscle, the brain appears to benefit from effortful training. Once a person reaches and surpasses middle age, that kind of training may be necessary to prevent the sort of weakening and wasting that, for different reasons, also threatens the muscles. “The brain needs exercise just like the body, or it winnows away,” says Catherine Caldwell-Harris, PhD, a bilingualism researcher and associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University. “The phrase use it or lose it — there’s a lot of neuroscience behind that.”
Caldwell-Harris says that almost any novel activity — from taking up a new hobby to visiting a new place — seems to engage and challenge the brain in ways that can improve its functioning. But learning and using a second language may be the ultimate form of brain training. “Learning a new language is a type of all-demanding activity that involves almost all aspects of cognitive functioning,” she says. “It’s as complicated as chess or any science, but it also involves social interaction and activation and all of those processes.”
Language training not only seems to make the brain healthier and stronger, but it may also helpfully reshape the way its owner experiences and interacts with the world.
Bilingualism and the brain’s executive functions
The brain is not a static organ. It’s constantly changing in response to the tasks it performs. Many of those changes are measurable — both in terms of the brain’s electrical activity and in the actual mass and density of its cortical structures.
For a 2019 study in Frontiers in Neuroscience, Italian researchers measured the effects of language training on the brains of healthy older adults between 59 and 79. After just four months of studying English, the people in the study scored significantly better on two research-backed measures of brain health and acuity: tests of global cognition and functional connectivity.
“Learning a foreign language is one of the non-pharmacological cognitive interventions that can boost cognition in young and older adults,” says Giovanna Bubbico, PhD, first author of the study and a postdoctoral research at the University of California, Irvine and D’Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara in Italy.
Unlike other novel activities — the cognitive benefits of which tend to fade once a person’s brain has gotten the hang of things — a second language never stops challenging the brain in helpful ways. “A second language forces the brain to switch between two languages — inhibiting one and favoring the other — depending on the context,” Bubbico says. The cerebral processes involved in this sort of context-monitoring and switching seems to beef up the brain’s executive functions, or its ability to plan, concentrate, make decisions, and engage in other important aspects of cognition, she explains.
Caldwell-Harris adds to this point. “Being cognitively flexible and able to switch from one task to the other, rather than staying in autopilot, is an important aspect of executive functioning,” she says.
People who have poor executive functioning — an issue that often emerges late in life, or in some cases following a brain injury — have a reduced ability to shift their thinking or behavior in response to changing circumstances. Basically, their brains become mired in old or unhelpful patterns of activity. “If you’re bilingual, you have to constantly be alert to what language is being spoken to you, which keeps alive this switching aspect,” she says. This may be one way in which bilingualism helps keep the brain agile and healthy.
At this point, Caldwell-Harris says that it’s not clear whether learning a second language during childhood or early adulthood is somehow better for the brain than tackling this challenge later in life. But she points out that much of the research on the benefits of bilingualism — such as the work showing its associations with delayed Alzheimer’s disease — have involved people who learned a second language at a young age.
Just as adopting a healthy diet or exercise routine early in life is surely better than doing so only in old age, it’s a good bet that challenging the brain with a second language while young will be better for the brain than doing so later on. And apart from making the brain sharper or more adept, there’s evidence that learning a second language can enrich the way people interact with others and with the world.
The concept of “linguistic relativity”
The Aymara, an indigenous people of South America, aren’t looking forward to 2021. That’s because, in their native language, the idea of “looking forward” to anything in the future would make no sense.
For a 2006 study in Cognitive Science, researchers documented the way the Aymara talk about time. While English speakers — and the speakers of most other languages — describe the future as something in front of them that they’re moving toward, the Aymara people talk about time from the opposite orientation. Since the future is unseeable, they reason, it must be behind them and out of sight. The past, which can be seen, therefore lies before them. The Aymara even gesture at their backs when talking about the future, the study team found.
This is just one example of how language can influence the way a speaker thinks about life and the world. This influence is known as linguistic relativity. Anyone who has ever studied a foreign language — whether Spanish or French or Chinese — has likely noticed how that language’s treatment of certain ideas or concepts may differ from one’s own.
“When you learn a foreign language, you learn that other people may think about things very differently than you do,” Caldwell-Harris says. “This experience can reveal new shades of meaning.”
She offers two more examples. The Russian language, unlike English, has two distinct words for the color blue — one referring to light blue shades and the other to dark blue shades. And research has found that, thanks to this linguistic distinction, Russians are quicker than English speakers at spotting differences among closely related shades of blue.
She also brings up the German word schadenfreude, which refers to the pleasure one may feel from another’s misfortune. While English speakers can understand this concept just as well as Germans, the fact that German speakers have a specific word for it likely strengthens their ability to identify and acknowledge this emotion in themselves or others.
Learning a new language confronts the brain with these sorts of unfamiliar, perspective-shifting insights. Basically, it takes what the brain thinks it understands and shakes it up, and this sort of shake-up is not only “mentally invigorating,” Caldwell-Harris says, but it can also help people see the world — and one another — in new and enriching ways.
She says that there are countless language learning tools online — many of which are free. Those are great places to get started. Once a person has some rudimentary knowledge, there are services that can connect learners with native speakers. (Search online for “language exchange” programs, which can pair you up with someone who speaks the language you’re studying and is also interested in learning your language. Most are inexpensive.)
“The problem with learning a foreign language is that people really just want the end result — to be fluent,” Caldwell-Harris adds. While fluency is an admirable goal, the real payoff for the brain begins as soon as a person starts learning. And it doesn’t stop.
By Markham Heid (Medium). Illustration: Kieran Blakey
How To Train Your Brain To Remember Everything
Todd Sampson, an Australian TV personality, underwent a brain makeover in a six-episode series called Redesign My Brain. By the end of the first season, Todd was able to memorize and enumerate a shuffled deck of cards at the 2012 World Memory Championships in London.
“The brain is a dynamic organ”, says Psychology Today. “It can change its architecture throughout life, responding to experience by reorganizing connections — in short, by wiring and rewiring itself.”
Behind the Redesign My Brain project was Michael Merzenich, a psychologist who pioneered the fastest-growing science in the world — neuroplasticity. He wanted to prove his hypothesis that each part of our body is mapped onto its own area in the brain.
He believed that our central nervous system wasn’t as hard-wired as previously thought. He rightly guessed that there are specific exercises we can do to train our brain to excel in particular areas.
1. The Method of Loci
The method of loci (also called mind palace technique) is one of the mnemonic techniques used for developing superior memory performance. To put it simply, it’s all about associating new information with something you already know. And, in this case — places (“loci” means “places” in Latin).
Visualization is at the core of this method — the more vivid, the better. Joshua Foer, a writer who happened to win the U.S. Memory Championship, opens up about this technique in his TED Talk.
How it works:
You have to pick a location (your home, neighborhood, office floor, etc.) that you know very well, and most importantly, you have to imagine the pathway you usually take navigating through that location.
Whatever the items you need to memorize, try placing them on the checkpoints along that path. So, let’s say you’re cramming for a chemistry exam and you need to remember this equation:
Mg+HCl → MgCl2+H2
Now, imagine Mg opening the door and greeting you into your own home. You say hello and step in only to see hydrochloric acid appearing from behind the closet and taking magnesium by the hand.
The two of them take you to your living room. Suddenly, the hydrogen and chlorine from hydrochloric acid decide to go to the bathroom and come back with their twin brothers (H2 and Cl2).
They fight over magnesium, and magnesium decides to leave with the Cl twins leaving H2 twins behind. Breaking bad, right?
2. Storytelling
This technique does wonders for memorizing lists of items when you go grocery shopping, for example.
Like the previous method, it’s based on the power of visualization and association whereby something too familiar to remember is associated with something more meaningful to you. It’s also essential to make those items interact.
How it works:
Let’s say you want to go shopping for coffee, bread, wine, and cheese.
Before you walk out the door, think about a situation where Kofi Annan (the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations) and Brad Pitt (the famous Hollywood actor) are having their photo taken under a grapevine, and the photographer says “cheese!”.
Once you step into the supermarket, the image is bound to stick in your memory.
3. Beat the Doorway Effect
Picture this all-too-common situation: you are sitting in your living room, and you suddenly remember you have to call someone. You dash for your phone that’s in the other room… but as soon as you go through the door, you no longer remember why you got up in the first place.
Walking through the doorway causes a temporary loss of memory, a study says. Because we experience a location update, our brain sets up a mental block. To stop being confused, you need to beat your mind to it.
How it works:
The moment you decide you need to go to the other room to fetch or do something, stop yourself for a second and visualize yourself in that other room, doing what you intended to go there for.
If it’s the phone call, envision yourself actually finding the phone, dialing the number, and answering.
4. Chunking
Our brains are wired for grouping things and seeing patterns, so why not use this superpower to improve memory performance?
It’s all about taking small bits of information and combining them into meaningful wholes i.e. larger units. According to the Peak Performance Center, chunking decreases the number of items you are holding in short-term memory by increasing the size of each item.
How it works:
One example of chunking is creating keywords or acronyms. Our brain can hold 7 items maximum (+/-2), so you should not go over that number for a single unit.
Say you can’t memorize the names of the Great Lakes of North America — Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. Take their first letters and make an acronym “HOMES”. Simple as that! For more advanced chunking techniques, check out this resource.
5. Spaced Repetition
Spaced repetition is one of the best learning techniques that revolves around spacing out your studying intervals. It’s been discovered that “long-term memory is enhanced when learning events are spaced apart in time, rather than massed in immediate succession” (Vlach & Sandhofer 2012).
Scientists agree that we all possess a “forgetting curve”, meaning that our ability to retain the memory of something we’ve learned declines over time unless we stop at an ideal moment and review.
Depending on the complexity of the new information you’re trying to retain in your long-term memory, the moment you stop to review will vary.
How it works:
The key is to stop at the right moment and repeat what you’ve learned. This needs to be done multiple times over a period of time.
The rule of thumb is that you should make your first review the day after you started studying. After that, you can make the second one after a week, the next one after approximately two weeks and the last one after a month. (As you can see, the periods double.)
If you’re afraid you can’t decide on your own, there are apps you can use to help you out. They are based on the old-school principle of flashcard studying with sophisticated algorithms that can gauge the intervals. The most popular so far are Anki, SuperMemo, TinyCards, and EdApp.
6. Spread the word
“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein
Have you ever been in a situation where you thought you’d learned something, and then, when you started explaining it to another person, it all got blurry? Well, you’re not alone.
How it works:
Once you start learning something new (studying for an exam, reading a book, etc.), make a stop after every section or a chapter and share it with someone else!
Try and explain what you’ve learned as if you’re teaching a class. In fact. It’s been suggested, “that [when] students actually teach the content of a lesson, they develop a deeper and more persistent understanding of the material than from solely preparing to teach.” (Fiorella & Mayer 2013)
If you can’t find anyone in the mood for listening, be your own audience. Stand in front of the mirror and start talking.
Takeaway Tips
While these tactics will surely increase your memory performance, you also need to take care of your brain’s wellbeing.
Get enough sleep and practice relaxation techniques as frequently as possible.
Of course, some foods will send your memorization potential skyrocketing too. Dark chocolate, blueberries, fatty fish, broccoli, and nuts should be topping your next shopping list. (Here’s a great way to start your super-brain journey: try and memorize these foods by using some of the techniques we’ve mentioned!)
Take baby steps at first, and don’t get discouraged if the methods don’t work right away. You could also combine several of them at once. For example, you can mix chunking and storytelling.
And remember, memory power is not a sign of intelligence or the lack thereof. It’s just one of the ways our minds work, and one of many you can amp up with enough practice and patience.
By Eric Sangerma (Medium). Image Credit: Rawpixel.
Inhibitory Control
Inhibitory Control
Broadly speaking, inhibitory control is the ability to suppress the activation, processing, or expression of information that would otherwise interfere with the efficient attainment of a cognitive or behavioral goal. Everyday examples of inhibitory control include a student who must ignore the
See more on http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/developmental-psychology/learning-and-memory/inhibitory-control/
Learning
Learning
Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience. As the individual interacts with the environment, certain events promote behavior. In some cases, the outcomes produced by those responses inform the individual about likely consequences for behavior in future situations.
See more on http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/developmental-psychology/learning-and-memory/learning/
Learning Disabilities
Learning Disabilities
Learning disability is a general term that describes specific kinds of learning problems. It is thought to be a neurological or processing disorder that affects the brain’s ability to receive, process, store, and respond to information. It can cause a person to have difficulty learning and using
See more on http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/developmental-psychology/learning-and-memory/learning-disabilities/
Long-Term Memory
Long-Term Memory
Long-term memory encompasses all learning or knowledge that is stored in the mind for longer than a few seconds or minutes. It encompasses all forms of learning and memory: memory for past events, facts, motor skills, perceptual skills, and conditioning. Long-term memory interacts with short-term
See more on http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/developmental-psychology/learning-and-memory/long-term-memory/
