Final school exams are typically seen as a very intense period of preparation. But it is also important to rest during this time if you want to maximise your performance.
Dreams keep our brains ticking over. They wash the thoughts from the day’s events at a molecular level. They might even help us imagine what’s possible during our waking hours.
The drug has been hailed as a ‘turning point’ in Alzheimer’s treatment. But keep in mind the trial only included participants with early or mild disease. And while it slowed decline, it’s not a cure.
People with aphantasia are unable to deliberately bring to mind mental images. Understanding the mechanisms of aphantasia reveals that different types of cognition exist.
Pinpointing where memories are stored in the brain and how they are transmitted could provide new targets to treat neurological diseases and serve as models for neuromorphic computing.
Of the three types of memory (sensory, working and long-term), the last two are indispensable for learning. Students must be taught to work on them in class in order to avoid meaningless memorisation.
By learning what parts of the brain are crucial for imagination to work, neuroscientists can look back over hundreds of millions of years of evolution to figure out when it first emerged.