attention

Lost your keys? Your cat? The brain can rapidly mobilize a search party
04/22/2013 - 09:49

A contact lens on the bathroom floor, an escaped hamster in the backyard, a car key in a bed of gravel: How are we able to focus so sharply to find that proverbial needle in a haystack? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that when we embark on a targeted search, various visual and non-visual regions of the brain mobilize to track down a person, animal or thing.

 

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Fragile X makes brain cells talk too much
02/23/2013 - 09:53

The most common inherited form of mental retardation and autism, fragile X syndrome, turns some brain cells into chatterboxes, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report. The extra talk may make it harder for brain cells to identify and attend to important signals, potentially establishing an intriguing parallel at the cellular level to the attention problems seen in autism.

 

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Study Shows Early Cognitive Problems Among Those Who Eventually Get Alzheimer's
12/28/2012 - 13:15

People who study or treat Alzheimer’s disease and its earliest clinical stage, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), have focused attention on the obvious short-term memory problems. But a new study suggests that people on the road to Alzheimer’s may actually have problems early on in processing semantic or knowledge-based information, which could have much broader implications for how patients function in their lives.

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Smoking and high blood pressure may be linked to ageing of the brain
11/26/2012 - 09:24

Researchers at King’s College London have identified several cardiovascular risk factors, including smoking and high blood pressure, which may be associated with the accelerated decline of memory, learning, attention and reasoning in older adults.

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Offering a reward can improve visual awareness in stroke patients
11/25/2012 - 22:55

Stroke patients who have difficulty paying attention to part of their visual field may perform better when offered a reward, a study by Imperial College London and Brunel University researchers has found.

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Wandering Minds Associated With Aging Cells
11/17/2012 - 09:15

Scientific studies have suggested that a wandering mind indicates unhappiness, whereas a mind that is present in the moment indicates well-being. Now a preliminary UCSF study suggests a possible link between mind wandering and aging, by looking at a biological measure of longevity.

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