Archive for February 2009
Do long work hours lead to dementia?
Middle-age workers doing more than 55 hours a week have poorer mental skills, including short-term memory and ability to recall words, than those clocking up fewer than 41 hours, a study has found.
The stress and exhaustion of long hours could be as bad for the brain as smoking, concluded the study.
Britain has some of the longest working hours in Europe, with one in eight doing more than 48 hours a week.
Many claim to thrive on the stress and long hours of demanding jobs.
But the study of 2,214 British civil servants, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggests they are underestimating the long-term damage they could be doing to their brains.
Social networking sites harm children’s brains, scientist claims
Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.
The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day.
But they will strike a chord with parents and teachers who complain that many youngsters lack the ability to communicate or concentrate away from their screens.
‘Gut instinct’ may draw upon unconscious memories, study suggests
LiveScience (via Yahoo! News) reports:
After conducting some unique memory and recognition tests, while also recording subjects’ brain waves, scientists conclude that some gut feelings are not just guesswork after all. Rather, we access memories we aren’t even aware we have.
“We may actually know more than we think we know in everyday situations, too,” said Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern University and co-researcher on the study. “Unconscious memory may come into play, for example, in recognizing the face of a perpetrator of a crime or the correct answer on a test. Or the choice from a horde of consumer products may be driven by memories that are quite alive on an unconscious level.”
