Articles

The conventional view of brain development has been that most of this takes place in utero and in the first three years, with the further development continuing until the brain is fully mature at around 10-12 years of age. The turbulence of adolescent behavior has been deemed to be mostly caused by hormonal changes. Piaget, who identified four stages of cognitive development, assessed that his highest stage — that of formal, abstract reasoning — occurred around 13-14 years (although not everyone reaches this level, which requires appropriate education).

Visual Language, a term introduced by Robert Horn, refers to "language based on tight integration of words and visual elements". The visual elements include shapes, as well as images (e.g., icons, clip art).

What does this have to do with memory? Well, partly of course, because the appropriate use of images usually makes information more memorable, but visual language has considerably more to offer than that. To appreciate what it is, Horn has examples at http://web.stanford.edu/~rhorn/

Genes

Several genes have been implicated in Alzheimer's, but the big one is the e4 allele of the ApoE gene (on chromosome 19). This variant is found in about a quarter of the population.

Having it doesn't mean you are foreordained to develop Alzheimer's, but it certainly increases the risk substantially. The risk goes up considerably more if both of your genes are the e4 variant (remember you inherit two: one from each parent).

Brain autopsies have revealed that a significant number of people die with Alzheimer’s disease evident in their brain, although in life their cognition wasn’t obviously impaired. From this, the idea of a “cognitive reserve” has arisen — the idea that brains with a higher level of neuroplasticity can continue to work apparently normally in the presence of (sometimes quite extensive) brain damage.

Here are some notes on the water cycle:

I don't think anyone's going to try arguing that fruit and vegetables are not good for your health! We know they're good. But that's just general "oh, I know it's good for me" — do you know that the benefits are not only for your general health, your protection against obesity and diabetes, cancer and heart disease, but also for your brain. Actually, there's two aspects to this. An unhealthy diet (one rich in junk food, in saturated fat and sugar) is actively bad for your brain, and (the right) healthy diet is actively good for your brain.

Children learn. It’s what they do. And they build themselves over the years from wide-eyed baby to a person that walks and talks and can maybe fix your computer, so it’s no wonder that we have this idea that learning comes so much more easily to them than it does to us. But is it true?

There are two particular areas where children are said to excel: learning language, and learning skills.

Recently a “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” came out in the U.S. This framework talked about the importance of inculcating certain “habits of mind” in students. One of these eight habits was metacognition, which they defined as the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.

As I said in my discussion of different scripts, Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Here it is (the 3rd column shows the English counterpart):

А  а   a

Б  б   b

В  в   v

Г  г   g

Д  д   d

Е  е   ye

The limitations of working memory have implications for all of us. The challenges that come from having a low working memory capacity are not only relevant for particular individuals, but also for almost all of us at some points of our lives. Because working memory capacity has a natural cycle — in childhood it grows with age; in old age it begins to shrink. So the problems that come with a low working memory capacity, and strategies for dealing with it, are ones that all of us need to be aware of.