8 New Ways of Looking at Intelligence
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/11/8-new-ways-of-looking-at-intelligence/#ixzz2VzGGCfKFJune 11, 2013
http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/11/8-new-ways-of-looking-at-intelligence/
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Brain Aging May Depend on Childhood Intelligence
by June 06, 2013
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/06/06/brain-aging-may-depend-on-childhood-intelligence/#ixzz2VzECw62g
Older people who stay sharp tend to have a thicker cortex, which is the outermost region of the brain that includes the areas responsible for judgment and complex thought. But while preserving the cortex is important for successful aging, a new study suggests that childhood intelligence — not anything specific done in old age — largely accounts for why some elderly people have more cortical tissue and better cognition.
The study, which was published in Molecular Psychiatry, included nearly 600 Scots born in 1936 who had their IQs tested at age 11 and again at 70. When the participants were 73, they had their brains scanned to measure their cortical thickness. The research found that more than two-thirds of the association between cognitive ability in the elderly and cortical thickness was accounted for by differences in IQ decades earlier in childhood.
“It appears that aging well cognitively is not strictly due to something that one does or does not do in old age but rather, the end point of things that have been going on throughout one’s life,” says lead author Dr. Sherif Karama, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/06/06/brain-aging-may-depend-on-childhood-intelligence/#ixzz2VzFYtjt7
http://healthland.time.com/2013/06/06/brain-ahttp://healthland.time.com/2013/06/06/brain-aging-may-depend-on-childhood-intelligence/ging-may-
depend-on-childhood-intelligence/
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Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/03/why-we-should-read-literature/#ixzz2VzHwrzPh
Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, and Keith Oatley, a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, reported in studies published in 2006 and 2009 that individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and view the world from their perspective. This link persisted even after the researchers factored in the possibility that more empathetic individuals might choose to read more novels. A 2010 study by Mar found a similar result in young children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their “theory of mind,” or mental model of other people’s intentions.
“Deep reading” — as opposed to the often superficial reading we do on the Web — is an endangered practice, one we ought to take steps to preserve as we would a historic building or a significant work of art. Its disappearance would imperil the intellectual and emotional development of generations growing up online, as well as the perpetuation of a critical part of our culture: the novels, poems and other kinds of literature that can be appreciated only by readers whose brains, quite literally, have been trained to apprehend them.
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/03/why-we-should-read-literature/#ixzz2VzINalPX * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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