News by Subject Social & Behavior

Our doubts about what we think we know pique our curiosity and motivate us to learn more, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.

A new Michigan State University study adds to growing evidence that participating in recreational sports not only can help improve grades while attending college, but it also can help students return for another year.

Interactions between a mother and her child have been linked to cognitive outcomes in childhood, but little work has looked at farther-reaching effects. In a Journal of Marriage & Family study that examined data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, more positive mother-child interactions during the first 16 years of life predicted higher education in adulthood, which predicted less decline in episodic memory, or the memory of autobiographical events.

Male and female rats whose mother experienced a simulated viral infection during pregnancy behave abnormally, consistent with behavioral alterations in autism or schizophrenia.

In a groundbreaking study published in Nature Neuroscience, Boston University researchers demonstrate that electrostimulation can improve the working memory of people in their 70s so that their performance on memory tasks is indistinguishable from that of 20-year-olds.

New research reveals the impact of poverty on children's brain activity. Researchers studied the brain function of children aged between four months and four years in rural India, and compared their results with children from families in Midwest America. They found that children in India from lower-income backgrounds, where mothers also had a low level of education, had weaker brain activity and were more likely to be distracted.