Hearing certain sounds during slumber can spur learning, according to research detailed at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s annual meeting in Montreal
MONTREAL—A good night’s sleep, or even just a nap, can be an aid to memory. Psychologists have known for years that sleep solidifies what we’ve learned during the day, transforming tenuous associations into stable ones. Learning while you snooze seems supremely efficient, and so people have long dreamed of co-opting this process so that their dozing brain shores up what matters to them—say, material they’ve studied for a test or a talk, or verbiage in a foreign language they want to master. But until now there has been little support for the notion that studying in your sleep is useful. Psychology graduate student John Rudoy at Northwestern University in Illinois reported findings here on Monday at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2010 annual meeting that hint at a way to do that. Read the rest of this entry »
A team found the Campbell’s monkey can add a simple sound to its alarm calls to create new ones and then combine them to convey even more information.
Human language is incredibly complex, but one defining feature is the process of adding a prefix or suffix to a word to change its meaning.
For example, adding “hood” to the word “brother” to form “brotherhood”.
Researchers looking at Campbell’s monkeys (Cercopithecus campbelli campbelli) in the Ivory Coast’s Tai National Park found that these primates do a similar thing. Read the rest of this entry »
Today there was a different Google Icon. Each Google Icon has a news worthy story so I clicked on it and this is what I found.
Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water
By ALICIA CHANG (AP) – 1 hour ago
LOS ANGELES — The lunar dud for space enthusiasts has become a watershed event for NASA.
Spacecraft that crashed into the moon last month kicked up a relatively small plume. But scientists have confirmed the debris contained water — 25 gallons of it — making lunar exploration exciting again. Read the rest of this entry »
