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While brain games can't avert dementia in those genetically inclined toward the condition, one can ensure better brain fitness and long-term health. The brain thrives on continuous stimulation. Here are takeaway tips from the article: 1. Brain exercises should rely on novelty and complexity, including board games that are played with others. 2. All kinds of concentrated activities, like learning a foreign language or how to play a musical instrument, can be fulfilling. 3. Along with exercising and good nutrition, a brain that is fully engaged socially, mentally and spiritually is more resilient. 4. New, interactive learning is helpful. 5. Cognitive training that uses thinking, such as problem solving and learning, like reading a newspaper article and discussing it with a friend, has staying power in the brain - even 10 years after the training ends.

Children aged four and younger who speak two languages or are learning a second have more rapid improvements in inhibitory control, a study by the University of Oregon has said. Inhibitory control is the ability to stop a hasty reflexive response in behaviour or decision-making and use higher control to react in a more adaptive way. "Inhibitory control and executive function are important skills for academic success and positive health outcomes and well-being later in life," said Atika Khurana, the study's co-author and a professor in the Department of Counselling Psychology and Human Services and scientist at the UO's Prevention Science Institute. "The development of inhibitory control occurs rapidly during the preschool years," she said. "Children with strong inhibitory control are better able to pay attention, follow instructions and take turns. "This study shows one way in which environmental influences can impact the development of inhibitory control during younger years."

This article talks about learning styles (audio, visual, kinesthetic) and how there has not yet been conclusive proof that they actually exist. It cites a Psychological Science journal, as well as psychologist Dan Willingham. However, while it states there has been no scientific evidence to prove the existence of learning styles, it does not actively disprove their existence.

Check out this article to see how Psychologists use specific words and phrases to get their patients to open up and feel comfortable. This article goes into detail about how language helps people and why therapy can be good for someone.

Keeping in touch is no longer about face to face, but instead screen to screen, highlighted by the fact that more than 1 billion people are using Facebook every day. Social media has become second nature -- but what impact is this having on our brain? "In a recent study, researchers at the UCLA brain mapping center used an fMRI scanner to image the brains of 32 teenagers as they used a bespoke social media app resembling Instagram. By watching the activity inside different regions of the brain as the teens used the app, the team found certain regions became activated by "likes", with the brain's reward center becoming especially active." This article goes into depth on how social media like instagram is changing our brain. It shows us what parts of our brain are getting stimulated when we use social media! It also talks about peer influence, social learning, and reward circuitry.

This article includes new information about how the coronavirus lockdowns have negatively impacted children's speech and language skills. It has small anecdotes of real families with young children where their language progress was practically stalled during the lockdowns but able to bounce back through rigorous language assistance schools. It even touches on how by adulthood, "four times more likely to struggle with reading, three time more likely to have mental health issues, twice as likely to be unemployed and have social-mobility issues, " if someone has issues with language in childhood.

This article talks about our relationship with our own language. It is interesting because it makes a connection between our grammar/word choice and our mental health and gives advice on how to improve our lives.

Gratitude is a common aspect of social interaction, yet relatively little is known about the neural bases of gratitude expression, nor how gratitude expression may lead to longer-term effects on brain activity. This Indiana University study tested whether gratitude letter-writing had benefits on the emotional health of depressed patients. Researchers found that a simple gratitude writing intervention was associated with significantly greater and lasting neural sensitivity to gratitude - subjects who participated in gratitude letter writing showed both behavioral increases in gratitude and significantly greater neural modulation by gratitude in the medial prefrontal cortex three months later.

This article talks about how some languages are more efficient than others, meaning that some languages pack in more information per syllable than others. This affects the speed of a language because the greater the density of information, the longer it takes one's brain to process and verbalize a thought. Therefor, languages with low efficiency (and low density of information) are spoken faster than languages with high efficiency (and high density of information).

The etymology of some words. Amazing how things have changed.

Interesting article. There may be, however, counter-explanations for this combined phrase. Hip was cited by Samuel Johnson in the mid-1700s as a variant of the Latin phrase "eho, heus": an exclamation calling for attention (_The Nature of Roman Comedy_, Duckworth 1994). And hooray, according to the OED, is a variation of hurrah (int. and n.), a word used as early as 1716, a century before the anti-Semitic forces took it up as a rallying cry. Have snipped the following definitions from the OED: Word #1. Hip (int.): hip, int. (and n.4) 1. 'An exclamation or calling to one; the same as the Latin eho, heus!' (Johnson). 1752 in Ainsworth's Thes. Linguæ Latinæ (ed. 4) 1768-74 A. Tucker Light of Nature (1852) I. 34 Perhaps Dr. Hartley‥may give me a hip, and call out, 'Prithee, friend, do not think to slip so easily by me'. 2. An exclamation used (usually repeated thrice) to introduce a united cheer: hence as n. 1827 W. Hone Every-day Bk. 12 To toss off the glass, and huzza after the 'hip! hip! hip!' of the toast giver. a1845 T. Hood Sniffing a Birthday xiv, No flummery then from flowery lips, No three times three and hip-hip-hips! 1849 Thackeray Pendennis (1850) I. xvii. 154 'Here's Mrs. Smirke's good health: Hip, hip, hurray!' hip-hurrah v. (also hip-hip-hurrah) 1832 Examiner 609/2 One set of men 'hip hurrah' and rattle decanter stoppers. 1871 T. Carlyle in Lett. & Memorials J. W. Carlyle (1883) I. 116 In the course of the installation dinner, at some high point of the hep-hep hurrahing. Word #2: Hurrah: Pronunciation: /hʊˈrɑː/ /həˈrɑː/ /hʊˈreɪ/ /həˈreɪ/ Forms: Also 16- hurra, 17 hurrea, whurra, 18 hooray, ( hooroar), hourra. Etymology: A later substitute for huzza v. (not in Johnson, Ash, Walker; in Todd 1818), perhaps merely due to onomatopoeic modification, but possibly influenced by some foreign shouts: compare Swedish, Danish, Low German

The World Health Organisation counts 430m people as deaf or hard of hearing. Many use sign languages to communicate. If they cannot also use those languages to talk to computers, they risk being excluded from the digitisation that is taking over everyday life. Sign language poses particular issues in re: its translation to either text or speech. Some challenges include improving the machine-learning algorithms that recognise signs and their meaning and developing the best methods to interpret sign languages' distinctive grammars. The applications of such technology could improve the lives of the deaf, for example, allowing them to use their cell phones to search for directions or look up the meanings of unknown signs, without resorting to the written form of a spoken language.

Companies have had to change the way that they advertise during this pandemic because many people are scared and don't have a disposable income. Many companies focus on advertising the safety measures put in place by them. This makes people feel safe about buying the products. However, many people are still not ready to buy items right now. This has resulted in a switch of marketing that makes people feel like they are buying to help others. For example, some companies tout the fact that they are hiring workers. This is following a trend in recent decades in which buying can signify someone's morals or ideals. For example, many companies used to focus on how eco-friendly their products are. Now, companies focus on how they are helping workers keep their jobs. However, many local businesses do not have the resources to advertise and are floundering. This advertising strategy has also received some blowback as many find the messages shallow. For example, while big companies give people jobs, these workers receive little to no benefits and barely any sick leave. This phenomenon is called "disastertising" in which companies try to make themselves as knights saving the American public.

Check out this article to learn more about the impacts of talk therapy in relation to psychotropic medications, in addition to the controversy that often comes with the supposed effectiveness of talk therapy.

Babies first start learning language by listening to the rhythm and intonations of speech. They specifically listen to high pitches versus low ones and the loudness of syllables in speech. Before a baby is even born they already begin developing language. When in the womb, the intonation patterns of the mother are heard in the womb. "Baby talk" used by people to infants is a crucial part of an infants learning.Parents often exaggerate these aspects of language, which helps a baby to acquire it. Research shows babies prefer listening to this exaggerated, singsong way of talking compared to regular adult talk.

The more parents exaggerate vowels and raise the pitch of their voices when talking to babies, the more the babies babble, new research shows. Common advice to new parents is that the more words babies hear, the faster their vocabulary grows.

Today, people who can't speak or write because of paralysis have very limited ways of communicating, e.g. using a pointer to touch words or letters on a screen or having computers track their eye movements. In a medical first, researchers harnessed the brain waves of a paralyzed man unable to speak - and turned what he intended to say into sentences on a computer screen. Dr. Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, led the work in developing a "speech neuroprosthetic" -- decoding brain waves that normally control the vocal tract, the tiny muscle movements of the lips, jaw, tongue and larynx that form each consonant and vowel.

謝謝, Michael Chang ʻ22, for discovering this fun Mandarin Chinese weekly column, which examines various pop culture elements of Mandarin Chinese and teaches vernacular, vocabulary, and other linguistics aspects that Chinese learners are unlikely to learn in a classroom setting. A sampling: Chinese Internet slang, Chinese gastronomic terms, sarcastic phrases, traditional Chinese children's games, poetic terms for snow, anti-COVID virus health propaganda slogans.

Multilingualism has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages, including superior ability to concentrate, solve problems and focus, better mental flexibility and multitasking skills. Moreover, researchers are finding a swathe of health benefits from speaking more than one language, including faster stroke recovery and delayed onset of dementia. A steady stream of studies over the past decade has shown that 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.

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