"Our research was based on two well-known findings, Coyle continues. "The first is that performance on intelligence tests increases during adolescence. The second is that processing speed" -- the brain taking in and using new stimuli or information -- "as measured by tests of mental speed also increases during adolescence."
To find the relationship between these two phenomena, the UTSA psychologists analyzed the results of 12 diverse intelligence and mental speed tests administered to 6,969 adolescents (ages 13 to 17) in the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Intelligence was measured by performance on cognitive tests of diverse abilities, such as vocabulary knowledge, math facts, and mechanical comprehension. Mental speed showed up in timed tests of computing and coding -- matching digits and words and other arithmetic tasks.
In both of these categories, the researchers could see that the older teenagers did better and worked faster than the younger ones. Then, running the data in numerous ways, they discovered that the measured increase of intelligence could be accounted for almost entirely by the increase in mental speed.
This is what they expected to find, says Coyle. After all, "performance on intelligence tests reflects, in part, the speed of acquiring knowledge, learning things, and solving problems." Those cognitive processes, he says, are related to how fast the brain is working -- and all that improves during the teenage years.
"We speculate that we may be investigating a separate form of memory, distinct from traditional memory systems," said Kimberly Fenn, assistant professor of psychology and lead researcher on the project. "There is substantial evidence that during sleep, your brain is processing information without your awareness and this ability may contribute to memory in a waking state."
In the study of more than 250 people, Fenn and Zach Hambrick, associate professor of psychology, suggest people derive vastly different effects from this "sleep memory" ability, with some memories improving dramatically and others not at all. This ability is a new, previously undefined form of memory.
"You and I could go to bed at the same time and get the same amount of sleep," Fenn said, "but while your memory may increase substantially, there may be no change in mine." She added that most people showed improvement.
Fenn said she believes this potential separate memory ability is not being captured by traditional intelligence tests and aptitude tests such as the SAT and ACT.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110927124653.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Mind+%26+Brain+News%29
Researchers used to think that babies less than two years old did not understand that an object continues to exist when it is not currently in the baby's view. But in the mid-1980s, new ways of doing experiments with babies found that they do, in fact, know that objects don't disappear when you're not looking at them -- a concept known as object permanence. But it was still unknown what babies needed to remember about objects in order to remember their existence.
Now Melissa Kibbe, of Johns Hopkins University, and Alan Leslie, of Rutgers University, are working to figure out exactly what it is that babies remember about objects. For the new study, they showed six-month-old babies two objects, a disk and a triangle. Then they hid the objects behind small screens, first one shape, then the other. Earlier research has shown that young babies can remember what was hidden most recently, but have more trouble remembering the first object that was hidden. Once the shapes were hidden, they lifted the screen in front of the first object. Sometimes they showed infants the shape that was hidden there originally, but sometimes it was the other shape, and sometimes the object had vanished completely.
Psychologists measure how long babies look at something to see how surprised they are. In Kibbe and Leslie's study, babies weren't particularly surprised to see that the shape hidden behind the screen had changed, for example, from a triangle to a disk. But if the object was gone altogether, the babies looked significantly longer, indicating surprise at an unexpected outcome. "This shows that even though infants don't remember the shape of the object, they know that it should continue to exist," Kibbe says. "They remember the object without remembering the features that identify that object."
This helps explain how the young brain processes information about objects, Leslie says. He suspects the brain has a mechanism that acts like a kind of pointer, a mental finger that points at an object. Each finger can only point to one object. "Just like a finger that points to something, you can't tell from the finger itself what the shape of the thing being pointed at is," Leslie says. "You can't tell from looking at my finger whether I'm pointing at a cat or a dog." This study shows that the mechanism in the baby's brain that remembers the object doesn't have to remember much about it.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110927155220.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Mind+%26+Brain+News%29
Attention and hyperactivity problems worsen quality of life for many children with autism, a new study finds.
Researchers analyzed data from more than 2,000 children and adolescents in the Autism Speaks Autism Treatment Network's Registry and found that more than half of them had symptoms of either attention or hyperactivity problems. More than a third had significant symptoms of both.
The study also found that more than one-third of the children with an autism spectrum disorder had symptoms suggesting they may have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and about 10 percent were taking stimulant medications typically used to treat ADHD. This suggests that many children with autism and ADHD symptoms are not taking medications to treat ADHD symptoms.
The presence of ADHD symptoms further compromises the ability of children with autism to deal with daily situations, which might lead to a lower quality of life, said the researchers from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and Oregon Health Sciences University.
It's important to identify ADHD symptoms in children with autism so that they can be treated for such symptoms, the researchers said in a network news release. They added that further research is needed to determine whether stimulant medications improve ADHD symptoms in children with autism.
Read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/health/adhd-symptoms-may-add-to-burden-of-autism-1.3195627
U.S. pediatric health advisers on Thursday urged drug regulators to continue studying weight gain and other side-effects of antipsychotic drugs as they are increasingly taken by children.
Significant numbers of U.S. children are receiving drugs to tame aggression, attention deficit disorder and other mental problems, even though there is little conclusive data to show exactly how the medications work or whether they damage kids' health
The pediatric advisory panel on Thursday listened to preliminary results of a study sponsored in part by the FDA that, inconclusively still, compared whether some antipsychotic drugs put children at a higher risk of developing diabetes than others.
Similar to the recommendations the panel has made in previous years, it voted 16-1 to support the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's routine safety monitoring of the new generation of antipsychotics.
But the panel did so with a caveat that the agency specifically look at how to clarify the drugs' labels to highlight concerns about their impact on children, namely the risks of weight gain and diabetes.
"There is serious concern that children may be at a higher risk for serious adverse effects and we just don't have sufficient data to answer that question," said Dr. Jonathan Mink, a child neurology expert from the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/09/23/us-advisers-urge-fda-to-address-antipsychotics-in-kids/#ixzz1Z4NLIjrf
Asthma
The chronic lung disease affects an estimated 7 million kids under 18 and accounts for more than 14 million absences annually. Parents should give the school office (plus teachers and coaches) a plan that specifies symptoms, medications and what to do if an asthma episode does not improve with prescribed medicine, says Norman Edelman, the American Lung Association's chief medical officer. Early in the school year, parents should "do an environmental check of the allergens and other irritants that can trigger an attack," he adds.
It's important that "families work together with their schools and health care provider to manage conditions," says Linda Caldart-Olson of the American School Health Association.
Respiratory infections
A group of viruses that cause various upper and lower respiratory infections are quite common in autumn, says Cynthia DiLaura Devore, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health. These infections, which also can trigger asthma attacks, cause flu-like symptoms (coughs, fever, lack of appetite, vomiting, diarrhea) that can put a child out of commission for five to 10 days, and are contagious, says Devore. She says parents should keep children home until they're fever-free and off symptom-reducing medicines for 24 hours.
Influenza
January to March is the height of flu season, but now is the time for everyone 6 months and older to get the flu vaccine, says pediatric infectious-disease specialist Mary Anne Jackson of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. This year's vaccine is formulated to protect against the same three strains as last year's.
Stomach viruses
A number of viruses can infect the gastrointestinal tract, resulting in gastroenteritis or "stomach flu." Marked by vomiting and diarrhea, it usually lasts only 24 to 72 hours, says Devore. Because the viruses are spread through close contact by sharing food or eating utensils, hand-washing and the use of hand sanitizers are critical.
Head lice
In school districts with "no nit" policies, kids with lice must stay home until any sign of eggs has passed. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association of School Nurses oppose the policies because they have not been shown to effectively reduce the spread, no disease is linked to lice, and in-school transmission is rare, says Devore.
Preventable diseases
Outbreaks in the USA last year of potentially fatal, vaccine-preventable diseases, including pertussis (whooping cough) and measles, highlight the importance of "being vigilant about all immunizations," says Jackson. CDC offers immunization schedulers at cdc.gov/vaccines.
School refusal
Repeated episodes of what Devore calls "Sunday Night Stomach" or chronic absences without a medical excuse should be taken seriously, she says. When kids express anxieties, fears and resistance to school, they may simply need a little extra "reassurance, understanding and limit-setting" or there may be serious mental health concerns. Either way, it shouldn't be lightly dismissed, says Devore.
Read more: http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/story/2011-09-21/Top-reasons-for-school-absences-and-how-to-handle-them/50501620/1
Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people's dynamic visual experiences -- in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.
As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories, according to researchers.
"This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery," said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study to be published online Sept. 22 in the journal Current Biology. "We are opening a window into the movies in our minds."
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110922121407.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Mind+%26+Brain+News%29
Not getting enough sleep may disrupt blood sugar levels, a study of obese teens suggests.
For the study reported on in Tuesday's issue of the journal Diabetes Care, researchers studied 62 obese U.S. teens with an average age of 14.
The teens participated in the overnight sleep study so scientists could analyze their stages of sleep and glucose levels.
Getting too much or too little sleep was associated with higher glucose levels, researchers found.
"Our study found to keep glucose levels stable, the optimal amount of sleep for teenagers is 7.5 to 8.5 hours per night," said Dr. Dorit Koren, an author of the study and a pediatric endocrinologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Research on adults also suggests an association between sleep deprivation and increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, the study's authors noted.
Getting less deep sleep was also linked with decreased insulin secretion in the teens.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/09/20/teen-sleep-obesity-blood-sugar.html
A collaborative project between Duke University Medical Center researchers and chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been able to watch zinc in action as it regulates communication between neurons in the hippocampus, where learning and memory processes occur -- and where disrupted communication may contribute to epilepsy.
"We discovered that zinc is essential to control the efficiency of communication between two critical populations of nerve cells in the hippocampus," said James McNamara, M.D., senior author and chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke. "This addresses a longstanding controversy in the field."
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110921132334.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain%2Fepilepsy+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Mind+%26+Brain+News+--+Epilepsy%29
Sōsh™ is the new word in social skills development. It is also a mobile application designed to help ‘tweens, teens and young adults improve social skills. Sōsh is especially developed to be used by individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome. Dr. Mark Bowers, a pediatric psychologist, in conjunction with a counseling psychologist, developed the social skills app – moving social skills training into the high tech, mobile app world.
The Sōsh app contains the critical elements that individuals need to improve their social skills. Whereas other social skills tools and strategies are often used in artificial settings (a therapy group, at home, in a therapist's office), this portable application can be utilized in real life social situations when questions arise.
Sōsh is based on a decade of work with children, adolescents, and young adults who struggle with social difficulties. The Sōsh framework divides social functioning into five areas essential to social skills development and success: Relate (Connect with Others), Relax (Reduce Stress), Regulate (Manage Behaviors), Reason (Think it Through) and Recognize (Understand Feelings).
This approach to social skills has not been available until now. Individuals using the app learn to: practice conversation strategies, relax, pursue social opportunities, recognize feelings, make successful transitions, journal progress, eliminate negative thoughts, monitor behavior, and regulate speech volume, to name some of the many features. In fact, Sōsh contains over 60 well-designed and engaging screens of exercises, strategies, and practical information to improve social interactions.
read more: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/sosh/prweb8795906.htm
