Another report from Dr Pepperberg's lab -- I love hearing about Alex, her African gray parrot. He's 28 now. His latest achievement has been to spontaneously use the label "none" when tested on his counting skills, to indicate the absence of any objects. Interestingly, too, the training technique used with Alex is apparently having promising results with autistic children!

Wired have a nice little story about the new fashion for "cognitive fitness", especially as a means of staving off dementia. They mention an interesting point I hadn't considered, which is a fear that it may engender blame towards Alzheimer's sufferers -- in the same manner that the idea that having a positive outlook can protect you from cancer can lead to the accusation that if you die from cancer it's because you weren't positive enough. All your own fault, in other words. It's understandable that people are keen to think like this -- we all want to think we can control our fate -- but it causes unnecessary and cruel suffering to take it so far.

In general, of course, it can hardly be considered a bad idea to keep your brain active, but the article does make another excellent point , which is that it's probably counterproductive (and rather unpleasant) to ruin a person's sunset years by insisting they do schoolwork (eg, maths problems). I use the word "schoolwork" to indicate a certain chore-like nature (what an indictment of school!); the key point is that you should enjoy whatever activity you choose. Do maths if you enjoy it; do crosswords if you enjoy them -- but don't, for heaven's sake, feel "obliged" to do a crossword.

ScienCentral has a report on the advantages of video game training -- an interesting twist: one study claims the advantages of such training for laparoscopic surgeons; the researcher (a laparoscopic surgeon) found that surgeons who were also current video gamers performed 30% better on a laparoscopic training exercise than those who had never played video games!

The BBC reports on a new study getting us closer to a machine that can "read our minds" (don't worry; long way to go yet!)

And Simon Baron-Cohen, the autism researcher, has an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times about brain differences between the genders.