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A 2022 University of Cambridge study conducted by Sahakian, Langley, Chen, et al., and published in the journal _Neurology_, shows that that social isolation is linked to changes in brain structure and cognition - the mental process of acquiring knowledge - it even carries an increased risk of dementia in older adults. Previous research established that brain regions consistently involved in diverse social interactions are strongly linked to networks that support cognition, including the default mode network (which is active when we are not focusing on the outside world), the salience network (which helps us select what we pay attention to), the subcortical network (involved in memory, emotion and motivation) and the central executive network (which enables us to regulate our emotions). This particular study examined how social isolation affects grey matter - brain regions in the outer layer of the brain, consisting of neurons. It investigated data from nearly 500,000 people from the UK Biobank, with a mean age of 57. People were classified as socially isolated if they were living alone, had social contact less than monthly and participated in social activities less than weekly. The study also included neuroimaging (MRI) data from approximately 32,000 people. That data revealed that socially isolated people had poorer cognition, including in memory and reaction time, and lower volume of grey matter in many parts of the brain. These areas included the temporal region (which processes sounds and helps encode memory), the frontal lobe (which is involved in attention, planning and complex cognitive tasks) and the hippocampus - a key area involved in learning and memory, which is typically disrupted early in Alzheimer's disease. We also found a link between the lower grey matter volumes and specific genetic processes that are involved in Alzheimer's disease. Follow-ups with participants 12 years later showed that those who were socially isolated, but not

Studies suggest a link between negative cognition (a.k.a. negative thinking) and increased propensity for guilt, chronic anxiety clinical depression. (Apparently, women are more prone to negative cognition than men.) Psychology professor Emeritus Tom Stevens of California State University describes some common negative thinking pitfalls and offers advice as to what you can do instead. Research has supported the efficacy of cognitive therapy (called cognitive restructuring) that replaces these styles with more positive thinking. 1. Negative bias. Negative bias is a tendency to look at the more negative side of some event, person, object, or situation. It gives a negative interpretation or a negative point of view for looking at a situation. Instead think: I will assume the best instead of assume the worst. Positive self-fulfilling prophesies tend to create positive outcomes; negative self-fulfilling prophesies tend to create negative outcomes. Negative explanations of my own or other peoples' underlying motives cause me to intensify my anger or other negative feelings. Assuming the world is a hostile place creates fear, anxiety, and anger. 2. Negative selective abstraction. Selective abstraction means taking negative features of a situation out of context and exaggerating their significance. Usually it also means negating positive features. Example: A student who gets four "A"s and one "C," then focuses on the "C's." Instead think: I will list at least one positive feature for each negative feature. I will limit my focus on negative features to constructive thoughts about how I can either accept or change the negative features. 3. Overgeneralization. When we overgeneralize, we assume far-reaching conclusions from limited data. A student made a "D" on one test. She overgeneralizes, she doesn't just think "Well, I messed up on that one test. Instead, "I may not pass the course, not ever finish college." "I must be stupid and a failure." "My whole life is ruin

Although smartphones have immense potential to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost. In this research, we test the "brain drain" hypothesis that the mere presence of one's own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance. Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention-as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones-the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity. Moreover, these cognitive costs are highest for those highest in smartphone dependence.

"Non-native accents make speech somewhat more difficult for native speakers to parse and thereby reduces "cognitive fluency" - i.e., the ease with which the brain processes stimuli. And this, they found, causes people to doubt the accuracy of what is said. "...[However,] several recent studies suggest that modest disruptions of cognitive fluency - cases of cognitive "disfluency," if you will - prompt people to think critically."

This article discusses the correlation between listening to music and cognition. They mainly used pop music and distinguished their test subjects between extraverts and introverts.

Some studies show that listening to music improves cognitive performance and focus. Certain rhythms and beats can cause shifts in emotion, which can ultimately affect the way that we comprehend things we read. In one of their studies, a controlled group of students studied with music that caused them to feel anxiety while another listened to music that evoked concentration. They also allowed a certain controlled group to listen to their favorite song and actually performed worse on their tests.

Listening to music for relaxation is common among students to counter the effects of stress or anxiety while completing difficult academic tasks. Some studies supporting this technique have shown that background music promotes cognitive performance while other studies have shown that listening to music while engaged in complex cognitive tasks can impair performance.

"Longer words tend to carry more information, according to research by a team of cognitive scientists.... Piantadosi and colleagues suggest that the relationship of word length to information content might not only make it more efficient to convey information linguistically but also make language cognition a smoother ride for the reader or listener."

Have you ever experienced mind-numbing cold? Or have you ever felt like it was so hot you could barely think? Believe it or not, these expressions are more than just idioms. Research shows that shifts in core body temperature caused by extreme heat or cold can have significant effects not only on mood but also on cognition.

Great find, Kai!

This was a study done on university students that tested the effects of different kinds of music on cognitively demanding tasks (math problems). The results showed that people who were in silence scored much higher than those who listened to music. It also showed no significant difference between heavy-rock and piano music.

Lera Boroditsky, cognitive science professor at UC San Diego notes, "...a growing body of research is documenting how experience with language radically restructures the brain. People who were deprived of access to language as children (e.g., deaf individuals without access to speakers of sign languages) show patterns of neural connectivity that are radically different from those with early language exposure and are cognitively different from peers who had early language access. The later in life that first exposure to language occurs, the more pronounced and cemented the consequences. Further, speakers of different languages develop different cognitive skills and predispositions, as shaped by the structures and patterns of their languages. Experience with languages in different modalities (e.g., spoken versus signed) also develops predictable differences in cognitive abilities outside the boundaries of language. For example, speakers of sign languages develop different visuospatial attention skills than those who only use spoken language. Exposure to written language also restructures the brain, even when acquired late in life. Even seemingly surface properties, such as writing direction (left-to-right or right-to-left), have profound consequences for how people attend to, imagine, and organize information. The normal human brain that is the subject of study in neuroscience is a "languaged" brain. It has come to be the way it is through a personal history of language use within an individual's lifetime. It also actively and dynamically uses linguistic resources (the categories, constructions, and distinctions available in language) as it processes incoming information from across the senses.

Foreign language programs are often one of the first items to be scrutinized and cut when elementary, middle, and high schools in the U.S. face poor performance evaluations or budget crunches. However, many studies have demonstrated the benefits of second language learning not only on student's linguistic abilities but on their cognitive and creative abilities as well.

There are ways to reduce your risk of having a stroke - for example, you can exercise more and not smoke. But should a stroke occur, you might also be able to reduce your risk of losing brain function if you are a speaker of more than one language.

Dr. Thomas Bak, one of the study's authors, posits that language learning helps brains build "cognitive reserve": a rich network of neural connections - highways that can can still carry the busy traffic of thoughts even if a few bridges are destroyed, as via a stroke. "People with more mental activities have more interconnected brains, which are able to deal better with potential damage," Bak says. He likens language learning's effect on the brain to swimming's ability to strengthen the body. Learning a language at any stage in life provides a thorough workout, but other cognitive "exercises," such as doing puzzles or playing a musical instrument, might also benefit stroke recovery, he said. The research applies to the larger concept of neuroplasticity, in that the brain is dynamic and can adapt to new challenges when properly conditioned,

"Sustained changes in the region of the brain associated with cognitive function and emotional control were found in young adult men after one week of playing violent video games ... The results showed that after one week of violent game play, the video game group members showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional Stroop task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting Stroop task."

Actually, there are some studies just about emotional Stroop tests that sound similar to the one in the violent video games study. This looks like a good presentation about how emotional Stroop tests work: http://frank.mtsu.edu/~sschmidt/Cognitive/Emotion1.pdf This one talks about why those Stroop tests work: "In this task, participants name the colors in which words are printed, and the words vary in their relevance to each theme of psychopathology.The authors review research showing that patients are often slower to name the color of a word associated with concerns relevant to their clinical condition." - http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/~perlman/papers/stickiness/WilliamsEmoStroop1996.pdf This is a meta-analysis of emotional Stroop test studies that describes (actually, it's critical of) how such studies are done: http://www.psych.wustl.edu/coglab/publications/LarsenMercerBalota2006.pdf

Thanks, Ryan! I will take a look at these.

"[In] A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley ... Brain scans revealed that people with no symptoms of Alzheimer's who engaged in cognitively stimulating activities throughout their lives had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid, a destructive protein that is the hallmark of the disease. ... While previous research has suggested that engaging in mentally stimulating activities - such as reading, writing and playing games - may help stave off Alzheimer's later in life, this new study identifies the biological target at play. ... Notably, the researchers did not find a strong connection between amyloid deposition and levels of current cognitive activity alone. "What our data suggests is that a whole lifetime of engaging in these activities has a bigger effect than being cognitively active just in older age," said Landau. The researchers are careful to point out that the study does not negate the benefits of kicking up brain activity in later years."

Does the Turkish word küçük (pronounced coo-chook) mean "big" or "small"? If you guessed the latter without knowing the language, you're right-and there may be a cognitive explanation for your instinct. In a study published in Cognition earlier this year, researchers tested people's ability to guess at the meanings of words based on their sounds. The lead researcher of the study, Kaitlyn Bankieris, a cognitive scientist from the University of Rochester, noted, "Our study provides a potential neural grounding for sound symbolism." In linguistics, the idea of "sound symbolism" is that there's an underlying relationship between how words sound and what they mean-and it is sometimes used to support the theory that there's some underlying cross-language meaning that humans are hardwired to attach to certain sounds.

Research shows that under some conditions, music actually improves our performance, while in other situations music makes it worse - sometimes dangerously so. Absorbing and remembering new information is best done with the music off, suggests a 2010 study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology. Nick Perham, the British researcher who conducted the study, notes that playing music you like can lift your mood and increase your arousal - if you listen to it before getting down to work. But it serves as a distraction from cognitively demanding tasks. Music might enhance performance if a well-practiced expert, e.g. a surgeon, needs to achieve the relaxed focus necessary to execute a job he's done many times before, but not all physicians in the operating room agree re: the benefits of music. A study of anaesthetists suggested that many felt that music distracted them from carrying out their expected tasks. Another study found that singing or listening to music while operating a simulated car increased drivers' mental workload and slowed responses to potential hazards, leading them to scan their visual field less often and to focus instead on the road right in front of them. Other iPod rules drawn from the research: Classical or instrumental music enhances mental performance more than music with lyrics. Music can make rote or routine tasks (think folding laundry or filing papers) less boring and more enjoyable. Runners who listen to music go faster. But when you need to give learning and remembering your full attention, silence is golden.

Around the world more than half (around 60 to 75 percent) speak at least two languages. Most countries have more than one official national language. For example south Africa has 11. So being monolingual like most native english speakers are, we are becoming the minority.

Multilingualism serves an extremely practical purpose. Languages change and develop through social pressures. Over time, different groups of early humans would have found themselves speaking different languages. Then, in order to communicate with other groups - for trade, travel and so on - it would have been necessary for some members of a family or band to speak other tongues. We can get some sense of how prevalent multilingualism may have been from the few hunter-gatherer peoples who survive today. "If you look at modern hunter-gatherers, they are almost all multilingual," says Thomas Bak, a cognitive neurologist who studies the science of languages at the University of Edinburgh. "The rule is that one mustn't marry anyone in the same tribe or clan to have a child - it's taboo. So every single child's mum and dad speak a different language." The article also provides a useful summary of the benefits of speaking at least one other language: bilinguals outperform monolinguals in a range of cognitive and social tasks from verbal and nonverbal tests to how well they can read other people. Greater empathy is thought to be because bilinguals are better at blocking out their own feelings and beliefs in order to concentrate on the other person's. Bilingualism can also delay the onset of dementia and increase cognitive recovery after a stroke. And in addition to social and cultural benefits, bil

Neuroscientists are testing the embodied cognition metaphor theory articulated by Lakoff and Johnson using fMRI technology. Lakoff and Johnson argue that human cognition is embodied-that human concepts are shaped by the physical features of human brains and bodies, or as Lakoff puts it, "Our physiology provides the concepts for our philosophy."

A good working memory is perhaps the brain's most important system when it comes to learning a new language. But it appears that working memory is first and foremost determined by our genes. Mila Vulchanova, a professor at NTNU's Department of Modern Foreign Languages, led a study of approximately one hundred ten-year-old elementary school students from Norway. Her research suggests that a good working memory is a decisive factor in developing good language skills and competency. Vulchanova states, "Not only is working memory important in learning new words, it is also important in our general language competence, in areas such as grammar skills. Working memory is connected to our ability to gather information and work with it, and to store and manipulate linguistic inputs as well as other inputs in the brain." Vulchanova's results run contrary to some conventional assumptions in both linguistics and cognitive sciences. Quite often it is believed that children acquire languages regardless of their cognitive abilities, such as perception, spatial understanding, and working memory. In other words, children don't need to learn language per se. It just comes on its own. The results from Vulchanova's research contradict this idea. Not only did the researchers find out that there is a close relationship between language competence in the first language and working memory, but that language competence in the mother tongue correlated highly with skills in a foreign language. "We have found evidence that there is a link between language development and the capacity of our working memory, and that there are common cognitive mechanisms that support the ability to learn both your mother tongue and a second language," Vulchanova says. "This is important, because it has been the tradition in linguistics to maintain that learning your native language is qualitatively different from learning a foreign language," she says.