Worried about your memory? Want to improve your grades? Want to help your children learn?

This site offers hundreds of articles and reports on improving your memory, and about how memory works.

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Featured Commentary

Maybe it has nothing to do with self-control
Wed, 24 April 2013

I recently reported on Mynd about a finding that refines a widely-reported association between self-regulation and academic achievement. This association relates to the famous ‘marshmallow test...
Introducing Mynd
Tue, 26 March 2013

Everyday, I come across reports and articles on the Web that bear on the topic of memory and learning, and I faithfully file them away, with the intention of doing 'something' with them. Many get put in my file of articles to discuss, or riff off, in my blog - which grows and grows, until I end...
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Commentary at Mynd

Strategy use more important than IQ for academic achievement

Nice review in Scientific American of some of the research showing that the active use of a wide array of effective learning strategies is more...

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 16:25
The curators of normal

I've spoken before about the pernicious dangers in the concept of 'normal', and I have always privately...

Saturday, May 11, 2013 - 11:58
A defense of working memory training

There’s been a certain amount of criticism of working memory training recently. Scott Barry Kaufman in the Scientific American has put...

Monday, April 29, 2013 - 15:38
Improving academic performance with a simple psychological intervention

Stereotype threat is a factor not only for some ethnic groups, but for women in certain areas (e.g., math, engineering), and also for older adults...

Sunday, April 28, 2013 - 11:34
Ability to delay gratification predicts success only in some contexts

There's been a lot of talk in education about the message from research that self-control in pre-schoolers predicts their later success in the...

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - 21:23
Help on not getting sidetracked

Assuredly one of my biggest problems! and I'm sure I'm not alone, is the ever-present difficulty in not getting sidetracked. So much to do! So...

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - 21:02
How to provide support for friends with Alzheimer's

The New York Times' New Old Age blog has a lovely and helpful account of how a group of friends are supporting a friend with Alzheimer’s....

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - 20:54
The Science and Art of the Diagram

Following the (historically) brief period when we became fixated on text as the sole reliable source of information and means of...

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - 20:45
Eye movement therapy helps PTSD

It certainly sounds like pseudo-science, but that's why we do science - because the weirdness of something is not a particularly good reason to...

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 20:52
The Role of Context in Shaping Cognitive Development

I'm a great believer in the wide-ranging, and widely-underestimated, effects of context - on all manner of things. I'm also a fan of the view that...

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 14:36
Why we remember more from young adulthood than from any other period

Autobiographical memory is an interesting memory domain, given its inextricable association with identity. One particularly fascinating aspect of...

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 14:28
Critical Thinking Is Best Taught Outside the Classroom

Critical thinking - it's a bit of a buzz-word in education circles nowadays. And some of that buzz is that it tends not to be well taught (when it...

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 14:20
Does music training make you smarter?

Have to say I was a bit disappointed by this, seeing as how I'm a big fan of childhood instruction in music. But it must be remembered that even...

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 10:27
Is technology affecting attention & thought?

Duncan Jefferies on the Guardian's Teacher Network:

A growing number of books, including...

Thursday, March 21, 2013 - 15:54

Featured News

Forgetfulness in old age may be related to changes in retrieval strategy
Evidence is accumulating that age-related cognitive decline is rooted in three related factors: processing speed slows down (because of myelin degradation); the ability to inhibit distractions...
Monday, May 6, 2013 - 17:19
Frequent multitaskers are the worst at it
I’ve reported often on the perils of multitasking. Here is yet another one, with an intriguing new finding: it seems that the people who multitask the most are those least capable of doing...
Friday, March 8, 2013 - 10:03
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News at Mynd

New hope for autistic children who never learn to speak

A recent report from Autistica estimates that nearly a quarter (24%) of children with autism are non-verbal or minimally verbal — problems...

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 16:41
Attention warps memory space

A recent study reveals that when we focus on searching for something, regions across the brain are pulled into the search. The study sheds light...

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 16:39
Meditating leads to better grades

Three classroom experiments have found that students who meditated before a psychology lecture scored better on a quiz that followed than...

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 16:37
How your brain chunks ‘moments’ into ‘events’

We talk about memory for ‘events’, but how does the brain decide what an event is? How does it decide what is part of an...

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 16:34
Why it's hard to stay on task

Why do we find it so hard to stay on task for long? A recent study uses a new technique to show how the task control network and the default...

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 16:32
Reactivate if you want to remember

We know sleep helps consolidate memories. Now a new study sheds light on how your sleeping brain decides what’s worth keeping. The study...

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 16:30
It’s not the noise in the brain; it’s the noise in the input

A new study has found that errors in perceptual decisions occurred only when there was confused sensory input, not because of any ‘noise...

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 12:09
Late-life depression increases dementia risk

Late-life depression is associated with an increased risk for all-cause dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and, most predominantly,...

Saturday, May 11, 2013 - 21:10
No link between anesthesia and dementia

Because long-term cognitive decline can occur in some older adults after undergoing surgery, there has been some concern that exposure to...

Saturday, May 11, 2013 - 21:08
How the Alzheimer’s gene increases risk

We know that the E4 variant of the APOE gene greatly increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, but the reason is a little more...

Saturday, May 11, 2013 - 21:04
High blood sugar may raise Alzheimer’s risk

I’ve talked before about the evidence linking diabetes to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, but now a new study suggests that...

Saturday, May 11, 2013 - 21:03
A little stress can make brains sharper

While it’s well-established that chronic stress has all sorts of harmful effects, including on memory and cognition, the...

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - 14:07
More evidence of the value of gesture in teaching math

A new study claims to provide ‘some of the strongest evidence yet’ for the benefits of gesturing to help students learn.

The...

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - 10:07
A little simmering improves decision-making

A study has found that brain regions responsible for making decisions continue to be active even when the conscious brain is distracted with a...

Monday, April 29, 2013 - 18:02
Gene doubles Alzheimer’s risk in African Americans

A study involving nearly 6,000 African American older adults has found those with a specific gene variant have almost double the risk of...

Monday, April 29, 2013 - 17:57