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Except in the cases of stroke or traumatic brain injury, loss of cognitive function is not something that happens all at once. Cognitive impairment that comes with age may be thought of as belonging on a continuum, with one end being no cognitive impairment and the other end being dementia, of which Alzheimer's is the most common type.

Most cognitive processes decline with age

It does appear that most component processes of cognition decline with advanced age if the difficulty level is sufficiently high. For example, the following processes have all shown age effects:

Let’s talk about the cognitive benefits of learning and using another language.

In a recent news report, I talked about the finding that intensive learning of a very novel language significantly grew several brain regions, of which two were positively associated with language proficiency. These regions were the right hippocampus and the left superior temporal gyrus. Growth of the first of these probably reflects the learning of a great many new words, and the second may reflect heavy use of the phonological loop (a part of working memory).

Here’s an interesting study that’s just been reported: 72 seven- and eight-month-old infants watched video animations of familiar fun items being revealed from behind a set of colorful boxes (see the 3-minute YouTube video).

"Consolidation" is a term that is bandied about a lot in recent memory research. Here's my take on what it means.

Becoming a memory

Initially, information is thought to be encoded as patterns of neural activity — cells "talking" to each other. Later, the information is coded in more persistent molecular or structural formats (e.g., the formation of new synapses). It has been assumed that once this occurs, the memory is "fixed" — a permanent, unchanging, representation.

We must believe that groups produce better results than individuals — why else do we have so many “teams” in the workplace, and so many meetings. But many of us also, of course, hold the opposite belief: that most meetings are a waste of time; that teams might be better for some tasks (and for other people!), but not for all tasks. So what do we know about the circumstances that make groups better value?

The two types of first-letter mnemonics

First-letter mnemonics are, as their name suggests, memory strategies that use the initial letters of words as aids to remembering. This can be an effective technique because initial letters are helpful retrieval cues, as anyone who has endeavored to remember something by mentally running through the letters of the alphabet can attest to.

There are two types of first-letter mnemonic:

Prevalence of Parkinson's Disease

After Alzheimer's disease, the second most common neurodegenerative disorder is Parkinson’s disease. In the U.S., at least 500,000 are believed to have Parkinson’s, and about 50,000 new cases are diagnosed every year¹ (I have seen other estimates of 1 million and 1.5 million — and researchers saying the numbers are consistently over-estimated while others that they are consistently under-estimated!). In the U.K., the numbers are 120,000 and 10,000².

The evidence that diet, physical exercise, and mental stimulation all help prevent age-related cognitive decline and reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s, is now very convincing.

Studies of mice and (rather intriguingly) beagles, have provided evidence that ‘enriched’ environments — ones that provide opportunities for regular exercise and mental stimulation — reduce or prevent age-related cognitive decline, and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Our society gives a lot of weight to intelligence. Academics may have been arguing for a hundred years over what, exactly, intelligence is, but ‘everyone knows’ what it means to be smart, and who is smart and who is not — right?

Of course, it’s not that simple, and the ins and outs of academic research have much to teach us about the nature of intelligence and its importance, even if they still haven’t got it all totally sorted yet. Today I want to talk about one particular aspect: how important intelligence is in academic success.