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Playing video games is a common recreational activity of adolescents. Recent research associated frequent video game playing with improvements in cognitive functions. Improvements in cognition have been related to grey matter changes in prefrontal cortex.

Using only the power of their imaginations, children can transform a box into a boat, or a living room into a peril-fraught jungle. But while many famous theorists, including Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, have posited that pretending fuels children's intellectual and creative development, that may not be the case, suggests University of Virginia psychology professor Angeline Lillard, PhD, online in Psychological Bulletin.

Musical hallucinations, the experience of hearing music when none is being played, have been the subject of a study by Dr Sukhbinder Kumar, a research fellow at Newcastle University.

Peekaboo is a game played over the world, crossing language and cultural barriers. Why is it so universal? Perhaps because it's such a powerful learning tool.

Is playing football like falling in love? That question, which would perhaps not occur to most of us watching hours of the bruising game this holiday season, is the focus of a provocative and growing body of new science examining the role of oxytocin in competitive sports.