The impulsivity and risk-taking that are common among teenagers may be a side effect of having a brain tuned to learn a lot of new stuff fast, researchers say. So it could be good in the long run.
Being surrounded by noisy conversations, radio or TV can make it harder for toddlers to learn new words, researchers say. Quieter conversations didn't affect the learning process.
Should artificial intelligence mimic human behavior? The executive in charge of developing future generations of IBM's Watson tackles that and other questions about the limits and powers of AI.
For those who think there are not enough hours in the day, researchers may have just offered you a solution. The brain can continue tasks even while asleep, a study finds. Texting not included, alas.
Matt Haimovitz is 42 and a world-renowned cellist. His mother took him to many concerts as a kid, but nothing in his family history explains where he got his extraordinary talent. And that's typical, says Ellen Winner, a psychology professor at Boston College who has spent much of her career studying prodigies.
Even infants too young to discern the meaning of words seem better able to learn while listening to the sound of human speech than while listening to nonsense — speech run backward. Little surprise there, perhaps, but a study shows that recordings of lemur calls spark learning, too.