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4 simple exercises to strengthen your attention and reduce distractibility
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Our attention gets hijacked by everything from the stress in our lives to the ding of our phones. Neuroscientist Amishi Jha shows how we can cultivate the ability to focus on what really matters. “I think, therefore I am distracted.” Read full article: TEDEd Lessons Worth Sharing, “4 simple exercises to strengthen your attention and…
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What to Do When a Loved One Is Severely Depressed
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Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of…But deep in the comment threads, some have also been debating a more uncomfortable question: What do you do when a friend is depressed for such a long time that you’ve started to feel that that nothing you can do will make a difference, and your empathy reserves…
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Music Lessons Improve Children’s Cognitive Skills, Academic Performance
Structured music lessons significantly enhance children’s cognitive abilities, including language-based reasoning, short-term memory, planning and inhibition, which lead to improved academic performance. Published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, the research is the first large-scale, longitudinal study to be adapted into the regular school curriculum. Visual arts lessons were also found to significantly improve children’s visual and…
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The compelling case for working a lot less
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Researchers are learning that it doesn’t just mean that the work we produce at the end of a 14-hour day is of worse quality than when we’re fresh. This pattern of working also undermines our creativity and our cognition. Over time, it can make us feel physically sick – and even, ironically, as if we…
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Poor grades tied to class times that don’t match our biological clocks
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It may be time to tailor students’ class schedules to their natural biological rhythms, according to a new study from UC Berkeley and Northeastern Illinois University. Researchers tracked the personal daily online activity profiles of nearly 15,000 college students as they logged into campus servers. After sorting the students into “night owls,” “daytime finches” and…
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UMass Medical School Creates First Division of Mindfulness
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As the bar for research on mindfulness raises dramatically, a big change at the University of Massachusetts unites top-tier minds with increased resources to study meditation’s therapeutic potential. Read full article: mindful:healthy mind, healthy life, “UMass Medical School Creates First Division of Mindfulness.”
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Smartphone Detox: How To Power Down In A Wired World
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A growing number of doctors and psychologists are concerned about our relationship with the phone. There’s a debate about what to call the problem. Some say “disorder” or “problematic behavior.” Others think over-reliance on a smartphone can become a behavioral addiction, like gambling. Read full article: npr, “Smartphone Detox: How to Power Down In A…
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Learn How to Do Nothing With the Dutch Concept of Niksen
Instead of constantly occupying your mind with what you need to do next or bouncing from one task to another, niksen is the practice of slowing it all down. As Mecking writes, it’s a welcome reprieve from societal expectations about work and productivity that permeates the culture. Read full article: lifehacker, “Learn How to Do…
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Laptops Are Great. But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting.
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…college students learn less when they use computers or tablets during lectures. They also tend to earn worse grades. The research is unequivocal: Laptops distract from learning, both for users and for those around them. It’s not much of a leap to expect that electronics also undermine learning in high school classrooms or that they…
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Why Aren’t We Talking About the Cognitive Health Crisis?
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Maybe more than any other disease, severe cognitive impairments have the potential to unravel families. They’re not one and done. They drag on. They aren’t “lethal” in the normal sense. People with Alzheimer’s can lead long lives, the latter halves of which can get very difficult for everyone involved. Read full article: Marks Daily Apple,…