September 23 was the first official day of fall—and also National Falls Prevention Awareness Day. National Falls Prevention Awareness Day is dedicated to raising awareness about tools and methods that can help prevent older adults from falling.

Our visual processing brain fitness program, InSight, can help people avoid a fall. It does so by expanding useful field of view, the area a person can take in with a single glance. An NIA-funded study showed that people with poor useful field of view are at significantly higher risk for falls. That makes sense - your visual system (as well as somatosensory and vestibular systems) contributes to balance. A larger useful field of view can also help you spot an uneven sidewalk or other obstacle in time to step around it instead of tripping over it! You can learn more about InSight and its science basis and proof on our site.

As always, please feel free to reach out to our Support Community with any questions or comments about Posit Science.

Warm regards,

Jeff Zimman
Co-Founder

New Hope for Tinnitus Sufferers
Scientists at UC Berkeley recently made some discoveries about tinnitus that could lead to new treatments. They found that like ”phantom limb” syndrome, in which the brain continues to receive inputs from an amputated limb, tinnitus sufferers show brain activity in the auditory cortex even when there is no sound input coming into the ear. This finding provides evidence that certain types of targeted auditory brain training could be effective in treating tinnitus. Learn more about the study or find out about brain training and tinnitus.

Managing Others at Work Is Good for your Brain
Did you know that managing other people at work can increase the size of your hippocampus, the brain center for learning and memory? A new study from Australia shows that the more people you manage, the larger your hippocampus becomes. Find out why that might be the case.

Using Young Blood to Make an Old Brain New Again
Researchers recently found that when you give an older mouse an infusion of blood from a baby mouse, the older mouse’s brain starts producing new brain cells. While they’re not sure how it works, they suspect some aspects of brain aging are controlled by the blood. The next step: figuring out if benefits like these might work in humans, and why. Learn more.

Flashbulb Memories of September 11th
It’s widely known that people have strongly held memories of tragic events like September 11th, 2001, or the assassination of JFK. These memories are called “flashbulb memories” and seem especially vivid in people’s minds. But how well do they really remember? Find out.

Counting Sheep? Try Something Else If You Really Want Some Sleep
From a very young age, we’re taught that counting sheep can help a sleepless mind calm down and get some ZZZs. But sleep research shows that sheep-counting for insomnia pales in comparison to other relaxing activities—like focusing on breathing, imagining yourself floating on a cloud, or making boring lists in your head. Read more about this study or get sleep tips on our blog.

This is Your Brain on SpongeBob SquarePants
A small study has suggested that the pace of action in SpongeBob SquarePants might be too fast for children’s brains to follow, and could lead to attention deficits. When they compared SpongeBob-watchers to kids who watched the slower-paced Caillou or kids who drew pictures, they found that those who had tread in Bikini Bottom had more trouble paying attention, delaying gratification, and following rules directly after exposure to the show. Find out more.

For a Bilingual Baby, the First Year is Critical
Scientists have long known that when it comes to learning multiple languages, babies and kids perform much better than adults. New research shows that the period between 8 and 10 months of age may be a critical turning point for second language learning. Bilingual babies at that age get better at detecting differences between similar sounds, while monolingual babies get worse at detecting sounds that don’t occur in their language. Learn more.

Book of the Month
Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College
Sam Wang, PhD and Sandra Aamodt, PhD
How do children think? This is one of the major questions faced by every parent. Today’s parents try all manner of strategies to raise kids that are smart, happy, and confident, but this book digs into the inner workings of a child’s brain at different stages of development to sort through which things are mere marketing mumbo jumbo and what really works. Welcome to Your Child’s Brain offers applicable advice (some of which may surprise you) and dispels commonly held myths in favor of reliable scientific evidence. The authors tackle pertinent child-rearing topics from educational videos to ADHD and give you science-based answers about your kids from infancy through the teen years. Buy on Amazon.