Peas or carrots: Evidence-based education programs targeting stress and attention

Reblogged from my post on NeuWriteSD.org:

I’m always keen to hear how scientists are able to reach out to their communities, whether it is by talking to young students about research opportunities, by tutoring or teaching, or by taking steps outside the lab to make direct links between research and the community. At this year’s meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), one of the invited symposia, entitled “The Broader Applicability of Insights from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience”, focused on some of great links between developmental neuroscience and the community. One talk by John Gabrieli, professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, addressed the relationships between socioeconomic status (SES), elementary schools, standardized tests, and cognitive measures like IQ and processing speed [moral of the story: the elementary school you attend affects your standardized test scores, but not your IQ]. Here, I’ll focus on a talk by professor Helen Neville focused on how to train attention and reduce at-home stressors for kids coming from lower-SES backgrounds in order to buffer attentional skills from a young age. The moral of this story? Do all you can to create a stress-free, positive home environment, and give kids plenty of structured time to focus on tasks that require selective attention and suppression of distractions.

Read more on NeuWriteSD.org.

Oxytocin, bonding, and breastfeeding

Reblogged from NeuWriteSD.org:

Valentine’s Day is a time for expressing love, and while its title may initially conjure up socially normative images of candle-lit dinners, long-stemmed roses, and canoodling with a romantic partner, I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about the kind of love that prevents our species from dying out: that of a mother and infant. The bonding that takes place in the first six months of life is complex and still quite mystifying, but likely involves the touch, attention, and care of the mother, as well as a whole lot of hormones. And one aspect of an infant’s first few months that encompasses all of these factors is breastfeeding. Not only is breastfeeding important for nutrition, including brain and body development, but it is also an important factor in the earliest stages of human social development. Here we will touch on just some of the science behind why choosing to breastfeed may lead to benefits for babies and their bonds with their mothers.

Read more at NeuWriteSD.org.