Connections [3]

You have already done Connections [1] and Connections [2]; now, try Connections [3] as follows!

Look at the following image for 2 minutes; keep in mind how the shapes are connected (note that how many connecting lines exist in the image):

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Brain training computer games ‘can improve your child’s grades within weeks’


By DAVID DERBYSHIRE
Last updated at 1:51 PM on 14th June 2011


Brain training computer games can improve children's grades within weeks, scientists have found.

A study showed that video puzzles designed to exercise a child's 'working memory' boosted reasoning and problem solving skills for at least three months.

The findings are the latest to show that giving the grey matter a daily work out can sharpen wits and intelligence.

Brain training video games have been heavily promoted by computer company Nintendo in the last few years as a way of stimulating the mind and improving IQ.

However, some studies have challenged whether the games - which test memory, recall and mental problem solving - do any good.

The new research, by psychologists at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, tested the effects of brain training on 62 school children with an average age of eight and nine.

Half the children were given a daily 15-minute work-out using a selection of video games that tested working memory - the brain's ability to 'hold' information while it solves a problem.

Examples of working memory in action range from following a teacher's instructions to drawing on past experience to answer questions at job interviews.

It has an impact on every aspect of how the brain works.

In one test, the children were shown a picture of a lily pond and the image of a frog that appeared for three seconds at any one of six locations.

The youngsters had to press a key every time the frog was at the same location it occupied a given number of times before - and another key if it was in a different location.

The rest of the children used the time to test their general knowledge and vocabulary, the researchers report in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Even three months after the training ended, the students given the brain training did better on tests of abstract reasoning and problem solving, they found.

Dr Susanne Jaeggi, who led the study, said: 'The current findings add to the literature demonstrating that brain training works, and that transfer effects may even persist over time.'

However, the effectiveness of brain training varied hugely from one child to another, and is not guaranteed to work for all youngsters, they found.

Two years ago a study at Stirling University found that simple brain training games intended to boost working memory improve grades within a matter of weeks. Some students benefitted so much they shot from the bottom to the top of the class.

However, other commercially available programmes failed to help children, they found.


Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk, Brain training computer games ‘can improve your child’s grades within weeks’.

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Connections [2]

You have already done Connections [1]; now, try Connections [2] as follows!

Look at the following image for 70 seconds; keep in mind how the shapes are connected (note that there are 15 connecting lines):

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Now, read the following news to spend sometime before continuing this above exercise:

Electrically Stimulating the Brain Can Boost Visual Memory 110 Percent


By Rebecca Boyle

Literally donning an electrode-studded thinking cap can improve your memory by 110 percent, according to a new study by Australian researchers. The method applies electricity to the head to inhibit a specific region of the brain that has been implicated in autism.


The finding is a follow-up to previous research at the same lab that shows certain types of brain stimulation can unlock savant qualities in people who had not previously exhibited them.


Richard Chi, a Ph.D. student at the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, wondered if inhibiting a specific brain area could improve memory as well as perceptual skills experienced by people with autism, New Scientist reports.


In the study, 36 volunteers examined a series of slides containing shapes that varied in number, size and color, according to New Scientist. Then they were shown five "test" slides, some of which included the study slides, and some that did not. They were asked if they could remember any of the original "study" slides.


Then they donned an electrode cap that transmitted a weak electrical signal, in a method called transcranial direct current stimulation. One group received signals that boosted their right anterior temporal lobes, and suppressed activity on their left ATL. A second group got the opposite treatment and a third was a placebo group.


The first group's shape-recognition scores improved by 110 percent, the study found.


Both sides of the anterior temporal lobe are important for memory processing -- the left ATL deals with context, while the right ATL is associated with visual memory, New Scientist says. Chi's team says inhibiting activity in the left ATL reduces the confusing influence of context, cutting down on visual memory errors. People can more easily perceive the literal details of what they're seeing.


The team has already shown that low-frequency magnetic pulses can inhibit false memories, also by temporarily inhibiting the left ATL.


People with autism have lesions on their left ATL, New Scientist reports.

Source: popsci 

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Connections [1]

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Source: Statesman.com: 'Moonwalking With Einstein' pays tribute to muscularity of the mind
A look at the nature of memory by Joshua Foer.
By Marie Arana
THE WASHINGTON POST
Published: 7:19 p.m. Sunday, March 13, 2011


It's hard to imagine a world in which all you can do with a thought is recall it: a world in which written words do not exist and the only way to hoard knowledge is to remember. That may sound like an extravagantly imagined story by Philip K. Dick, but once upon a time, long ago, before Gutenberg, before alphabets, before scribbles on cave walls, it was so. Memory was all the information we had and we were very good at holding on to it.

These days, it seems, we hardly remember anything. We have gadgets that do it for us: day planners, GPS devices, cell phones that log every number we've ever called, tiny motherboards with gargantuan gigabyte capacities. A recent survey revealed that a third of all British citizens under age 30 couldn't remember their home phone numbers without checking their mobiles. Thirty percent couldn't remember the birthdays of more than three family members. But the devaluation of memory has deeper cultural implications: Fully two-thirds of American teenagers do not know when the Civil War occurred; one-fifth don't have a clue whom we fought in World War II. Why waste brain cells on remembering when we can summon facts so easily on our cell phones?

Now comes science writer Joshua Foer — a formerly absent-minded young man who became the 2006 U.S. memory champion — to argue that in exchange for scientific progress, we may have traded away our most valuable human resource. Can you name the 44 American presidents? Can you list the capitals of all 50 states? Chances are you can't. And yet if you can read this review, your brain may have the capacity to recall 50,000 digits of pi, permanently commit to memory 96 historical facts in the course of five minutes, maybe even memorize every line of Yeats' mammoth poem "The Wanderings of Oisin."

"Anyone could do it, really," says the reigning world memory champion, Ben Pridmore. More likely, if you are like the rest of us, you will spend, according to Foer, a staggering average of 40 days a year making up for everything you've forgotten.

Foer is the brother of former New Republic editor Franklin Foer and novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. He chanced upon the U.S. Memory Championships in Manhattan in 2005 while doing research for a story about Pridmore.

"The scene I stumbled on," he writes, "was something less than a class of titans: a bunch of guys (and a few ladies), widely varying in both age and hygienic upkeep, poring over pages of random numbers and long lists of words." One year later, after grueling months of training, Foer won that competition by memorizing a set of 52 cards in one minute and 40 seconds, breaking the American record. But the book that he offers us is far more than a personal chronicle of that triumph.

Devalued though human memory has become, it is what makes us who we are. Our memories, Foer tells us, are the seat of civilization, the bedrock of wisdom, the wellspring of creativity. His passionate and deeply engrossing book, "Moonwalking With Einstein," means to persuade us that we shouldn't surrender them to integrated circuits so easily. It is a resounding tribute to the muscularity of the mind.

In the course of "Moonwalking," we learn that our brains are no larger nor more sophisticated than our ancestors' were 30,000 years ago. If a Stone Age baby were adopted by 21st century parents, "the child would likely grow up indistinguishable from his or her peers." The blank slate of memory hasn't changed one bit, except that we've lost the incentive to use it to store large amounts of information.

Foer introduces us to memory prodigies such as the young journalist S, who irked his employer because he took no notes but could memorize 70 digits at a time, reciting them forward and backward after one hearing. He could replicate complex formulas, although he didn't know math; was able to repeat Italian poetry, though he spoke no Italian; and, most remarkable of all, his memories never seemed to degrade.

There are, too, master chess players who can remember every move of a match weeks or even years after the event. They become so skilled at recalling positions that they can take on several opponents at once, moving the pieces in their heads, with no physical board before them.

Foer sets out to meet the legendary "Brainman," who learned Spanish in a single weekend, could tell if any number up to 10,000 was prime, and saw digits in colors and shapes, enabling him to hold long lists of them in memory. The author also tracks down "Rain Man" Kim Peek, the famous savant whose astonishing ability to recite all of Shakespeare's works, reproduce scores from a vast canon of classical music and retain the contents of 9,000 books was immortalized in the Hollywood movie starring Dustin Hoffman.

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