Press Release | 2011 | A better way to remember. Scientists and educators alike have long known that cramming is not an effective way to remember things. With their latest findings, researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, studying eye movement response in trained mice, have elucidated the neurological mechanism explaining why this is so. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, their results suggest that protein synthesis in the cerebellum plays a key role in memory consolidation, shedding light on the fundamental neurological processes governing how we remember. The "spacing effect", first discovered over a century ago, describes the observation that humans and animals are able to remember things more effectively if learning is distributed over a long period of time rather than performed all at once. Explaining this observation, the researchers found that the spacing effect was impaired when mice were infused with anisomycin and actinomycin D, antibiotics which inhibit protein synthesis.
Brain Workshop - a Dual N-Back game. Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory. Zapping the Brain Improves Math Skills. - A mild electrical current improves a person's ability to learn math skills. - The effect lasts up to six months. - The technique could help students learn other skills besides math as well. It's barely enough to light a light bulb, but passing a very mild current of electricity through the brain can turn on a metaphorical light bulb in a person's brain.
Scientists from the University of Oxford have shown that they can improve a person's math abilities for up to six months. The research could help treat the nearly 20 percent of the population with moderate to severe dyscalculia (math disability), and could probably aid students in other subjects as well. "I am certainly not advising people to go around giving themselves electric shocks," said Roi Cohen Kadosh, a scientist at the University of Oxford and a co-author of a new paper. The UK scientists used a method known as transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS.