In the past week, you may have seen a few news headlines that talked about the idea that Alzheimer’s disease may be contagious. I’ve seen headlines like  ”Alzheimer’s Disease Contagious Like Mad Cow,” “Some Cases of Alzheimer’s May Be Transmitted,” and “Can You ‘Catch’ Alzheimer’s Disease?” Those all sound pretty scary, like something out of a [...]

In the excellent blog The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer offers his take on a couple of recent studies about how a person’s reaction to mistakes, and subsequent feedback about the mistakes, affect the learning process. The findings might interest you, especially if you are a parent with school-aged children. One recent study focused on why [...]

A new study published in Neurology has found that a deficiency in Vitamin B12 is associated with brain atrophy and increased cognitive decline. The study, which examined 121 patients age 65 and over throughout a 5 year period, measured serum markers of vitamin B12, neuropsychological test results, and MRI scans to draw conclusions about B12 [...]

A new study from Harvard that looked at nearly 14,000 women over time revealed that those who had a small drink each day aged better than heavy drinkers and non-drinkers. The researchers noted that those women who drank between 1/2 ounce and 1 ounce of alcohol per day were 28% more likely to “achieve successful [...]

Ed. note: Today we are pleased to present a guest post from Natalie Hunter of Online Schools. Click on her name above for a full biography. For many people, the boon of the information age means we have an unprecedented amount of knowledge at the click of a mouse, and can access news, facts, and trivia [...]

I recently read an article in the New York Times that made me think about some issues around how medical testing works. The article talked about a randomized, controlled study that aimed to prevent strokes by implanting a stent into the brain. One group received the stent surgery, while the control group received no surgical [...]

In a groundbreaking new study, a team of (very serious) academics have determined that a total of 704 head injuries occur in the 34 Asterix and Obelix comic books. That’s almost 21 per book! The researchers ranked the severity of the injuries on the standard Glasgow coma scale, and found that a shocking 390 of them fit [...]

An Australian study recently released a shocking finding: every hour of television a person watches shortens their life by an average of 22 minutes. Looking at the behavior of 11,000 participants, the Queensland scientists found that people who watched around 6 hours of TV each day lived an average of almost 5 years less than [...]

Julian Treasure is a sound and listening expert who thinks that the world is “losing its listening”- with the unfortunate consequence of losing out on human interaction and communication. While Treasure acknowledges that as someone who “lives to listen” he is probably in the minority, he believes that “every person needs to listen consciously to [...]

We’ve previously written on this blog about the importance of sleep and noted some interesting ways that lack of sleep can affect your waking self. New research piles on yet another reason you need to get those zzzzzs – getting a good night’s sleep, without interruption, is key for forming memories. This study differs from [...]