Arts edu­ca­tion influ­ences learn­ing and other areas of cog­ni­tion and may deserve a more promi­nent place in schools, accord­ing to a wave of recent neu­ro­science research.One recent study found that chil­dren who receive music instruc­tion for just 15 months show strength­ened con­nec­tions in musi­cally rel­e­vant brain areas and per­form bet­ter on asso­ci­ated tasks, com­pared with stu­dents who do not learn an instrument.

A sep­a­rate study found that chil­dren who receive train­ing to improve their focus and atten­tion per­form bet­ter not only on atten­tion tasks but also on intel­li­gence tests. Some researchers sug­gest that arts train­ing might sim­i­larly affect a wide range of cog­ni­tive domains. Edu­ca­tors and neu­ro­sci­en­tists gath­ered recently in Bal­ti­more and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to dis­cuss the increas­ingly detailed pic­ture of how arts edu­ca­tion changes the brain, and how to trans­late that research to edu­ca­tion pol­icy and the class­room. Many par­tic­i­pants referred to the results of Dana Foundation-funded research by cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists from seven lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties over three years, released in 2008.

“Art must do some­thing to the mind and brain. What is that? How would we be able to detect that? asked Barry Gor­don, a behav­ioral neu­rol­o­gist and cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity, who spoke May 8 dur­ing the “Learn­ing and the Brain” con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. “Art, I sub­mit to you with­out absolute proof, can improve the power of our minds. How­ever, this improve­ment is hard to detect.”

Study links music, brain changes

Among the sci­en­tists try­ing to detect such improve­ment, Ellen Win­ner, a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­ogy at Boston Col­lege, and Got­tfried Schlaug, a pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­ogy at Beth Israel Dea­coness Med­ical Cen­ter and Har­vard Med­ical School, pre­sented research at the “Learn­ing, Arts, and the Brain sum­mit May 6 in Bal­ti­more. Their work mea­sured, for the first time, changes to the brain as a result of music training.

For four years, Win­ner and Schlaug fol­lowed chil­dren ages 9 to 11, some of whom Read the rest of this entry »

Quick: say the color in which each word in this graphic is dis­played (don’t just read the word!):

Here you have a round-up of some great recent arti­cles on mem­ory, aging, and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties such as self-control:

1) How to Boost Your Willpower (New York Times).

- “The video watch­ers were later given a con­cen­tra­tion test in which they were asked to iden­tify the color in which words were dis­played. (Note: now you see why we started with that brain exer­cise…) The word  for instance, might appear in blue ink. The video watch­ers who had sti­fled their responses did the worst on the test, sug­gest­ing that their self-control had already been depleted by the film challenge.”

- “Finally, some research sug­gests that peo­ple strug­gling with self-control should start small. A few stud­ies show that peo­ple who were instructed for two weeks to make small changes like improv­ing their pos­ture or brush­ing their teeth with their oppo­site hand improved their scores on lab­o­ra­tory tests of self-control. The data aren’t con­clu­sive, but they do sug­gest that the quest for self-improvement should start small. A vow to stop swear­ing, to make the bed every day or to give up just one food may be a way to strengthen your self-control, giv­ing you more willpower reserves for big­ger chal­lenges later.”

Com­ment: learn­ing, build­ing abil­i­ties, are processes that require prac­tice and grow­ing lev­els of dif­fi­culty. Like train­ing our mus­cles in the gym. So the advice to start small and pro­gres­sively do more makes sense. Many times the enemy of learn­ing is the stress and anx­i­ety we pro­voke by try­ing to do too many things at the same time…

2) Jog­ging Your Mem­ory (Newsweek) Thanks Chris for alert­ing us!

- “No one should expect mir­a­cles soon, if at all. But the deeper sci­en­tists peer into the work­ings of mem­ory, the bet­ter they under­stand Read the rest of this entry »

Please enjoy this brain teaser com­pli­ments of puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. He found this one in the Mensa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Geniuses by Harold Gale.

The Empty Triangle

Ques­tion:
Which fig­ure should be placed in the empty triangle?

This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic. Let us know how you do!

Click here to read the Answer and Solu­tion.

Here is a new brain teaser from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll. He found this one in the Mensa pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber Puz­zles for Math Geniuses by Harold Gale.

Tip­ping the Scales

Ques­tion:
The top two scales are in per­fect bal­ance. How many dia­monds will be needed to bal­ance the bot­tom set?

This puz­zle works your exec­u­tive func­tions in your frontal lobes by using your pat­tern recog­ni­tion, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and logic.

Click here to read the Answer and Solu­tion.

Here’s a quick quiz to test your mem­ory and think­ing skills which should work out your tem­po­ral and frontal lobes. See how you do!

1. - Name the one sport in which nei­ther the spec­ta­tors nor the par­tic­i­pants know the score or the leader until the con­test ends.
2. - What famous North Amer­i­can land­mark is con­stantly mov­ing backward?
3. - Of all veg­eta­bles, only two can live to pro­duce on their own for sev­eral grow­ing sea­sons. All other veg­eta­bles must be replanted every year. What are the only two peren­nial vegetables?
4. - What fruit has its seeds on the outside?
5. - In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bot­tle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bot­tle is gen­uine; it hasn’t been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?
6. - Only three words in Stan­dard Eng­lish begin with the let­ters “dw” and they are all com­mon words. Name two of them.
7. - There are 14 punc­tu­a­tion marks in Eng­lish gram­mar. Can you name at least half of them?
8. - Name the one veg­etable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.
9. - Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet begin­ning with the let­ter “S.”

Click here for the answers.

Here is new brain teaser writ­ten by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll.

The Really, Really, Really Big Number

Dif­fi­culty: HARDER
Type: MATH (Numerical/Abstract)
Intim­i­da­tion Fac­tor: HIGH — but don’t be scared!

Ques­tion:
When you divide 12 by 5, the remain­der is 2; it’s what’s left over after you have removed all the 5s from the 12.  When you raise 4 to the fifth power (that is, 4⁵), you mul­ti­ply four by itself five times: 4x4x4x4x4, which equals 1,024.

What is the remain­der when you divide 100¹⁰⁰ by 11?

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

If you missed Part 1, also writ­ten by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll, you can start there and then come back here to Part 2.

Con­cen­tric Shapes:
The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

Dif­fi­culty: HARDER
Type: MATH (Spa­tial)

Ques­tion:
Imag­ine a square within a cir­cle within a square. The cir­cle just grazes each square at exactly four points. Find the ratio of the area of the larger square to the smaller.

In this puz­zle you are work­ing out many of the same skills as in Part I: spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­ory (tem­po­ral lobes), logic (frontal lobes), plan­ning (frontal lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

In honor of Math­e­mat­ics Aware­ness Month 2007: Math­e­mat­ics and the Brain, here is another math­e­mat­i­cal brain ben­der from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll …

The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 1 of 2

Dif­fi­culty: HARD
Type: MATH (Spa­tial)

Ques­tion:
The area of a square is equal to the square of the length of one side. So, for exam­ple, a square with side length 3 has area (3²), or 9. What is the area of a square whose diag­o­nal is length 5?

In this puz­zle you are work­ing out your spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­ory (tem­po­ral lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.

Go on to Con­cen­tric Shapes: The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

Here is another mind-bender cre­ated by Wes Car­roll for the Sharp­Brains readers.

Pre­sent­ing …
Dr. Nasty’s Giant Cube

Dif­fi­culty: HARDER
Type: HYBRID (Logic/Spatial)

Ques­tion:
The dia­bol­i­cal Dr. Nasty has turned his Growth Ray on a per­fect cube that used to mea­sure one foot on a side. The new larger cube has twice the sur­face area of the orig­i­nal. Find the vol­ume of the larger cube.

Click to read Hint #1.

Click to read Hint #2.

Click to read Hint #3.

Click to read Hint #4.

Click to read the Solu­tion and Expla­na­tion.