News reports of research into memory March 2003
For index of all headlines, go to News & Views main page
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For news about Alzheimer's research go directly to the Alzheimer's page
You can find links to the journals referred to on this site here: Journal links
March 2003
Low birth weight still impacting exam scores 16 years on
A study of 334 16-year-olds found that those who
weighed 1,500 grams or less at birth, scored an average of 32.33
on their GCSEs (the researchers gave a numerical score to each GCSE
grade, starting with eight for A*), compared to an average score of
36.78 for those with a normal birth weight. The difference was
greatest for maths and statistics. There was no difference in
results for geography and history, and the normal birth weight group
achieved better results in general science and English. The
participants were closely matched for school and several social
variables.
The research was published in
Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Full reference
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2880627.stm
Face recognition may not be a special case
Many researchers have argued that the brain processes
faces quite separately from other objects — that faces are a
special class. Research has shown many ways in which face
recognition does seem to be a special case, but it could be argued
that the differences are due not to a separate processing system,
but to people’s expertise with faces. We have, after all, plenty of
evidence that babies are programmed right from the beginning to pay
lots of attention to faces. A new study has endeavored to answer
this question, by looking at separate and concurrent perception of
faces and cars, by people who were “car buffs” and those who were
not. If expert processing of these objects depends on a common
mechanism (presumed to be related to the perception of objects as
wholes), then car perception would be expected to interfere with
concurrent face perception. Moreover, such interference should get
worse, as the subjects became more expert at processing cars. This
is indeed what was found. Experts were found to recognize cars
holistically, but this recognition interfered with their recognition
of familiar faces. While novices processed the cars piece by piece,
in a slower process that did not interfere with face recognition.
This study follows on from earlier research in which car fanciers
and bird watchers were found to identify cars and birds,
respectively, using the same area of the brain as is used in face
recognition. A subsequent study found that people trained to
identify novel, computer-generated objects, began to recognize them
holistically (as is done in face recognition). This latest study
shows that, not only is experts’ car recognition occurring in the
same brain region as face recognition, but that the same neural
circuits are involved.
The findings were reported online on March 10 in
Nature Neuroscience.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-03/vu-cfe030503.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/health/11PERC.html
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993479
No support for idea that pregnancy affects memory and concentration
A study of pregnant
women found many agreed with the popular view that pregnancy affects
your memory. However, mental tests during pregnancy and after the
birth found no difference between the performance of women who were
pregnant and those who were not. It was possible that the affects
are too mild to be picked up by the tests, or that the fatigue
commonly experienced by women during pregnancy and early motherhood
leads women to believe that their memory and concentration are
affected.
The research was presented at the
British Psychological Society annual conference in Bournemouth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2847797.stm
People remember speech better when it is accompanied by gestures
A recent study had participants watch someone narrating three
cartoons. Sometimes the narrator used hand
gestures
and at other times they did not. The participants were then asked to
recall the story. The study found that when the narrator used
gestures as well as speech the participants were more likely to
accurately remember what actually happened in the story rather than
change it in some way.
The research was presented to the
British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Bournemouth
on Thursday 13 March.
Helping memory with "natural" supplements
Do caffeine and glucose help
concentration? A recent study found that volunteers who drank a
mixture containing caffeine and glucose (as well as trace levels of
guarana, ginkgo and ginseng) showed clear improvements in memory and
attention. Those who consumed the individual ingredients, or a
placebo, did not show such improvements.
Another study by the same researchers found that high doses of lemon
balm improved memory and led to greater feelings of calmness in 20
volunteers. The lemon balm was found to increase the activity of
acetylcholine – an important chemical messenger which is reduced in
people with Alzheimer’s disease.
These studies were reported at the
British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Bournemouth
13-15 March.
Reference
Why estrogen helps memory
Estrogen
has been implicated as having a role in memory in a number of
studies, although findings have been mixed as to the value of HRT
for improving memory in post-menopausal women. A new study helps us
understand why estrogen might be helpful. The study details how
nerve cells in the hippocampus "grow in complexity" when exposed to
estrogen, increasing connections among the nerve cells. It may be
that, without estrogen, the connections that are there might not
work as efficiently in storing and recalling certain types of
memories. Previous studies have shown that the ability of women to
remember word lists varies during their normal monthly cycle.
The study was published in the March 15 issue of
The Journal of Neuroscience.
Full reference
2
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-03/ru-rwc031403.php
Age-related changes in the brain's white matter affect cognitive function
From around age 60, "white-matter lesions"
appear in the brain, significantly affecting cognitive function. But
without cognitive data from childhood, it is hard to know how much
of the difference in cognitive abilities between elderly individuals
is due to aging. A longitudinal study has been made possible by the
Scottish Mental Survey of 1932, which gave 11-year-olds a validated
cognitive test. Scottish researchers have tracked down healthy
living men and women who took part in this Survey and retested 83
participants.Testing took place in 1999, when most participants were
78 years old.
It was found that the amount of white-matter lesions made a
significant contribution to general cognitive ability differences in
old age, independent of prior ability. The amount of white-matter
lesions contributed 14.4% of the variance in cognitive scores; early
IQ scores contributed 13.7%. The two factors were independent.
Although white-matter lesions are viewed as a normal part of aging,
they are linked with other health problems, in particular to
circulatory problems (including hypertension, diabetes, heart
disease and cardiovascular risk factors).
Full text of the article is available at
http://www.apa.org/journals/pag/press_releases/march_2003/pag181140.html
The report appeared in the March issue of
Psychology and Aging.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-03/apa-aci031703.php
Brain implant may restore memory
An artificial hippocampus — a
programmed silicone chip — is to be linked with live tissue taken
from rat brains, and then will be tested on live animals. If all
goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have
suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's
disease.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,912940,00.html
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993488
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-03/ns-twf031203.php
Activity in the mediotemporal lobe lower in elderly with poor memory
An imaging study has revealed that,
although there is no difference on standard MRI scans,scans showing
the amount of oxygen (and thus activity) find that elderly persons
with a poor memory have less activity in the mediotemporal lobe when
storing new information than elderly persons with a normally
functioning memory.This more sensitive scan may help early diagnosis
of Alzheimer's. You can see an image of the brain scans at
www.nwo.nl/news.
The research was done as part of a doctoral thesis by Dr Sander
Daselaar.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-03/nofs-svp032103.php
http://www.nwo.nl/NWOHome.nsf/pages/NWOP_5KRH7V?OpenDocument&g=NWO&n=ACPP_4WMESE&rc=1
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