Bilingual children have a better “working memory” than monolingual children

A study conducted at the University of Granada and the University of York in Toronto, Canada, has revealed that bilingual children develop a better working memory –which holds, processes and updates information over short periods of time– than monolingual children. The working memory plays a major role in the execution of a wide range of activities, such as mental calculation (since we have to remember numbers and operate with them) or reading comprehension (given that it requires associating the successive concepts in a text).

The objective of this study –which was published in the last issue of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology– was examining how multilingualism influences the development of the “working memory” and investigating the association between the working memory and the cognitive superiority of bilingual people found in previous studies.

Executive Functions

The working memory includes the structures and processes associated with the storage and processing of information over short periods of time. It is one of the components of the so-called “executive functions”: a set of mechanisms involved in the planning and self-regulation of human behavior. Although the working memory is developed in the first years of life, it can be trained and improved with experience.

According to the principal investigator of this study, Julia Morales Castillo, of the Department of Experimental Psychology of the University of Granada, this study contributes to better understand cognitive development in bilingual and monolingual children. “Other studies have demonstrated that bilingual children are better at planning and cognitive control (i.e. tasks involving ignoring irrelevant information or requiring a dominant response). But, to date, there was no evidence on the influence of bilingualism on the working memory.

The study sample included bilingual children between 5 and 7 years of age (a critical period in the development of the working memory). The researchers found that bilingual children performed better than monolingual children in working memory tasks. Indeed, the more complex the tasks the better their performance. “The results of this study suggest that bilingualism does not only improve the working memory in an isolated way, but they affect the global development of executive functions, especially when they have to interact with each other”, Morales Castillo states.

Music Education

According to the researcher, the results of this study “contribute to the growing number of studies on the role of experience in cognitive development”. Other studies have demonstrated that children performing activities such as music education have better cognitive capacities. “However, we cannot determine to what extent children perform these activities due to other factors such as talent or personal interest”.

“However, the children in our study were bilingual because of family reasons rather than because of an interest in languages.

Chimpanzees have faster working memory than humans

Chimpanzees have a faster working memory than humans according to a remarkable study showing that it takes them a fraction of a second to remember something that it would take several seconds for humans to memorise.

A Japanese scientist has demonstrated the prowess of chimps in remembering in less than half a second the precise position and correct sequence of up to nine numbers on a computer screen.

The numbers are shown together randomly distributed on a computer screen and as soon as the chimps press the number “one” the rest of the numerals are masked. However, they can almost invariably remember where each number was.

It is impossible for people to do the same cognitive task that quickly, said Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a primatologist at Kyoto University. “They have a better working memory than us,” he told the American Association for the Advancment of Science meeting in Boston.

Professor Matsuzawa had carried out the memory experiments on a female chimp called Ai, which means “love” in Japanese, and Ayumu, her son who was born in 2000 and has shown even better memory skills, he said.

Professor Matsuzawa suggested that chimps have developed this part of their memory because they live in the “here and now” whereas humans are thinking more about the past and planning for the future.

Study Shows Working Memory Is Driven By Prefrontal Cortex And Dopamine

One of the unique features of the human mind is its ability re-prioritize its goals and priorities as situations change and new information arises. This happens when you cancel a planned cruise because you need the money to repair your broke-down car, or when you interrupt your morning jog because your cell phone is ringing in your pocket.

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from Princeton University say that they have discovered the mechanisms that control how our brains use new information to modify our existing priorities.

The team of researchers at Princeton’s Neuroscience Institute (PNI) used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan subjects and find out where and how the human brain reprioritizes goals. Unsurprisingly, they found that the shifting of goals takes place in the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain which is known to be associated with a variety of higher-level behaviors. They also observed that the powerful neurotransmitter dopamine – also known as the “pleasure chemical” – appears to play a critical role in this process.

Using a harmless magnetic pulse, the scientists interrupted activity in the prefrontal cortex of the participants while they were playing games and found they were unable to switch to a different task in the game.

“We have found a fundamental mechanism that contributes to the brain’s ability to concentrate on one task and then flexibly switch to another task,” explained Jonathan Cohen, co-director of PNI and the university’s Robert Bendheim and Lynn Bendheim Thoman Professor in Neuroscience.

“Impairments in this system are central to many critical disorders of cognitive function such as those observed in schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

Previous research had already demonstrated that when the brain uses new information to modify its goals or behaviors, this information is temporarily filed away into the brain’s working memory, a type of short-term memory storage. Until now, however, scientists have not understood the mechanisms controlling how this information is updated.

Making Memories: Drexel Researchers Explore the Anatomy of Recollection

What was your high school mascot? Where did you put your keys last night? Who was the first president of the United States?

Groups of neurons in your brain are currently sending electromagnetic rhythms through established pathways in order for you to recall the answers to each of these questions. Researchers in Drexel’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems are now getting a rare look inside the brain to discover the exact pattern of activity that produces a memory.

Dr. Joshua Jacobs, a professor in Drexel’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, is analyzing data accumulated from 60 epilepsy patients who have had electrodes implanted on their brains in order to determine the causes of their epileptic episodes.

"When performing seizure mapping, surgeons implant electrodes in many brain areas, while searching for seizure activity,” Jacobs said. “Thus, there many electrodes end up being in normal brain tissue, and they measure neuronal activity that reflects normal brain function – this is the function that we’re studying to learn about the nature of working memory."

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Brain’s Code for Visual Working Memory Deciphered in Monkeys

The brain holds in mind what has just been seen by synchronizing brain waves in a working memory circuit, an animal study supported by the National Institutes of Health suggests. The more in-sync such electrical signals of neurons were in two key hubs of the circuit, the more those cells held the short-term memory of a just-seen object.

Charles Gray, Ph.D., of Montana State University, Bozeman, a grantee of NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and colleagues, report their findings Nov. 1, 2012, online, in the journal Science Express.

“This work demonstrates, for the first time, that there is information about short term memories reflected in in-sync brainwaves,” explained Gray.

“The Holy Grail of neuroscience has been to understand how and where information is encoded in the brain. This study provides more evidence that large scale electrical oscillations across distant brain regions may carry information for visual memories,” said NIMH director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.

Prior to the study, scientists had observed synchronous patterns of electrical activity between the two circuit hubs after a monkey saw an object, but weren’t sure if the signals actually represent such short-term visual memories in the brain. Rather, it was thought that such neural oscillations might play the role of a traffic cop, directing information along brain highways.

Omega-3 Intake Heightens Working Memory in Healthy Young Adults

While Omega-3 essential fatty acids—found in foods like wild fish and grass-fed livestock—are necessary for human body functioning, their effects on the working memory of healthy young adults have not been studied until now.

In the first study of its kind, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have determined that healthy young adults ages 18-25 can improve their working memory even further by increasing their Omega-3 fatty acid intake. Their findings have been published online in PLOS One. 

“Before seeing this data, I would have said it was impossible to move young healthy individuals above their cognitive best,” said Bita Moghaddam, project investigator and professor of neuroscience. “We found that members of this population can enhance their working memory performance even further, despite their already being at the top of their cognitive game.”

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(Image credit: Matt Allworth/Courtesy Flickr)

Studies report early childhood trauma takes visible toll on brain; changes found in regions controlling heart and behavior

Trauma in infancy and childhood shapes the brain, learning, and behavior, and fuels changes that can last a lifetime, according to new human and animal research released today. The studies delve into the effects of early physical abuse, socioeconomic status (SES), and maternal treatment. Documenting the impact of early trauma on brain circuitry and volume, the activation of genes, and working memory, researchers suggest it increases the risk of mental disorders, as well as heart disease and stress-related conditions in adulthood.

Today’s findings show:

• Physical abuse in early childhood may realign communication between key “body-control” brain areas, possibly predisposing adults to cardiovascular disease and mental health problems (Layla Banihashemi, PhD, abstract 691.12).
• Rodent studies provide insight into brain changes that allow tolerance of pain within mother-pup attachment (Regina Sullivan, PhD, abstract 399.19).
• Childhood poverty is associated with changes in working memory and attention years later in adults; yet training in childhood is associated with improved cognitive functions (Eric Pakulak, PhD, abstract 908.04).
• Chronic stress experienced by infant primates leads to fearful and aggressive behaviors; these are associated with changes in stress hormone production and in the development of the amygdala (Mar Sanchez, PhD, abstract 691.10).

Another recent finding discussed shows that:
• Parent education and income is associated with children’s brain size, including structures important for memory and emotion (Suzanne Houston, MA).

Alpha Waves Close Your Mind for Distraction, but Not Continuously, Research Suggests

Alpha waves were long ignored, but gained interest of brain researchers recently. Electrical activity of groups of brain cells results in brain waves with different amplitudes. The so-called alpha wave, a slow brain wave with a cycle of 100 milliseconds, seems to play a key role in suppressing irrelevant brain activity. The current hypothesis is that this alpha wave is associated with pulses of inhibition (every 100 ms) in the brain.

Mathilde Bonnefond and Ole Jensen (Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen) discovered that when distracting information can be anticipated in time there is an increase of the power of this alpha wave just before the distracter. Furthermore, the brain is able to precisely control the alpha wave so that the pulse of inhibition is maximal when the distracter appears. Indeed, between pulses of inhibition, there is still a window where the brain is excitable.

'It is like briefly opening a door to look what's happening outside. This enables us to detect an unexpected but important or dangerous event. But to avoid to be distracted by completely irrelevant information, it is better if the inhibition is active when a distracter is presented. It could be seen as a mechanism slamming the door of the brain on intruders'. The results are published by the scientific journal Current Biology at October 4.