ScienCentral also have an article on change blindness -- the phenomenon that allows magicians to work their magic on us. Apparently our failure to notice quite dramatic changes when our attention is diverted is all the fault of our parietal cortex. But change blindness isn't simply an amusing phenomenon; it's also a cause of road accidents. The moral is: don't just keep your eyes on the road, keep your parietal cortex there too!

ScienCentral has posted a number of interesting articles recently. One was on a rat study published last year finding that looking after young children is an enriching experience for the brain. Which I'm sure is true, but, you know, many of us feel it also impacts negatively on our cognitive processes -- I'm guessing that what happens is that your energies are redirected, so that while some parts of your brain grow, it's often at the expense of others. But, hey, it's just my theory. And on the really positive side, the mother rats had less of the substance that forms the toxic plaques characteristic of Alzheimer's -- so maybe having children helps protect against Alzheimer's. I don't know that anyone's done an epidemiological study looking at this, so that's an interesting question.

ScienCentral also have an article about a very exciting study that effected dramatic improvement in sensory movement in rats in whom stroke had been induced. Clinical trials are no doubt a way off, but this is a very promising study.

There's also an article on light therapy for people with seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Parents everywhere will want to point this out to their offspring (I certainly am!). A series of studies of high-achievers has borne out what some of us have been saying to our children all along: it's not how bright you are, it's whether you stick to the task. Perseverance is what it's all about. The studies aren't ground-breaking -- we've had reason to believe this before now (see my article on innate talent) -- but apart from confirming previous studies, the research is also interesting because the researcher has developed what she calls a "grit scale", which you can use to rate yourself (get your children to do their own themselves, it'll have much more impact that way!) -- see the article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

And New York Times has a fascinating magazine article on the subject of animal personality, which apparently is now a field of study! And fair enough too. Any dog and cat owner will not, of course, have any problem with the idea of non-human animals having personalities, but some people might be thrown by the idea of administering personality tests to giant octopi. However, that's nothing to the idea that fruit flies have personalities! But, hey, why not? Although it does make me feel a little bad about my days as a graduate student when I used to feed fruit flies to my experimental subjects (jumping spiders).

Two recent reports have come out touting the benefits of laughter. Scientific American reports on a study that found that watching a comedy significantly increased vascular blood flow, implying that regular laughter might be a preventive measure for cardiovascular problems. (Interestingly, watching a tension-filled movie like Saving Private Ryan had the opposite effect: constricting blood flow.) Following the adage that what's good for the heart is good for the brain, it would suggest that providing yourself with regular doses of humor is an easy and pleasant way to keep your brain active.

The second report discusses a study that found that listening to stand-up comedy lowered blood glucose levels in diabetics. That seems rather more weird, but the researcher, who's a geneticist, theorizes that emotion (like laughter) can switch genes off and on. His latest study claims to have found 23 genes that could be activated by laughter.