Mindframe

The Bengalese finch is what happens when for 250 years, people breed the white-rumped munia for its snowy plumage. It’s paler than its wild counterpart, more social. And although its genetic architects (bird breeders) weren’t selecting for singing skills, the Bengalese finch has a farmore complex, varied song . That last bit has some fascinating possible implications, concerning how we developed our own unique speaking abilities. The capacity for complex communication requires a wide variety of skills. You don’t just need to be able to recognize and respond to certain cues; in order to parse the meanings of new or unfamiliar cues, you also need to be able to guess at the other party’s intent. This is not something most wild animals have the bandwidth to do. For instance, wild foxes and wolves can’t recognize what it means when a person points to something. No amount of training will pass on the understanding. However, domesticated animals are the result of many generations of

For parents of young children hoping to boost their offspring’s language skills, the solution might be simpler than you think: talk to them. And then, crucially, let them respond to you. Rinse and repeat—and repeat, and repeat, as much as you can. In a recent article from the Journal of Neuroscience , researchers studied 40 healthy young children (27 male, 13 female) between the ages of 4 and 6 across a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Of course, 40 kids is not a large enough sample size to draw any definitive conclusions, but the study does offer an interesting place to start. The scientists found that early language exposure is a pretty good predictor of white matter connectivity between two key language-related parts of the brain, known as Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area . Broca’s area handles the movements necessary to produce speech, while Wernicke’s area aids in understanding speech, and selecting accurate words to verbalize thoughts. However, not just

Good news for those of you who make it a point to stay physically active: a recent experiment may suggest that regular exercise decreases the effects of age-related memory loss. In a study published in the journal Cortex , a group of young people (18 to 31 years old) and a group of older folks (55 to 74) each completed a memory test and a fitness test. To determine their memory chops, the participants had to essentially practice attaching a name to a new face—frequently a vexing task for people of a certain age. Instead of meeting strangers, they viewed pictures of unfamiliar faces, each attached to a name they had to learn—all while observed in an MRI machine. The fitness test involved walking and running on a treadmill; by measuring the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide in their inhalations and exhalations, researchers could ascertain what’s called the cardiorespiratory fitness of each subject. While overall the young ones had an easier time with the names

It’s an old stereotype that women can pick up on social nuances that men can’t. Ask a neuroscientist whether women are more adept at interpreting feelings from looking at people’s faces, and you’ll get a resounding yes. Or possibly, a resounding no. It turns out that it really depends which neuroscientist you ask. To pick one example , in 2009, Olivier Collignon and his team from the Université de Montréal Centre de recherche en neuropsychologie et cognition (CERNEC) hired actors to portray the fear or disgust in front of 23 men and 23 women, all between the ages of 18 and 43. Participants then had to categorize each performance by emotion. This study found that women completed the assignment more accurately. Women also responded faster when judging the faces of other women. However, that sample size of 46 might raise a few eyebrows when it comes to stating any solid, sweeping conclusions about the sexes. On the other hand, a 1986 metanalysis by Peter Shapiro and Steve