Guest Post by Samuel Seidenberg:

Conclusion: For study time, skip the tunes. If you’re a software developer, leave the background music on to keep your productivity at its peak.  To complement your new language acquisition, learn to play an instrument as well.

You may have first heard it from your middle school music teacher: “Listen to Mozart while you study, it’ll increase your IQ!” This oft repeated “fact” has origins in a 1993 study published in Nature, which showed that a person’s spatial reasoning skills temporarily improved while listening to Mozart.¹  The study was soon misquoted in a New York Times article, and the rumor began to spread that classical music “makes you smarter” and can serve as a study aid.

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Ex Girlfriend Still Wants To Be Friends 3 Years >Guest Post from Kathy McGurk:

If you have been following our blog posts at all, I’m sure it has become clear that we love to talk about sleep! In the past, we have expressed why sleep is so important and its significant connection to helping us learn. Not only have we have learned that sleeping allows our body to remember what’s important, but sleep also prepares our minds for future learning. Still yet, we have even provided tips on how to get a better night’s sleep and how to cure your insomnia.

But, have you ever wondered what dreaming has to do with all of this? Does dreaming play a role in our learning too? While pondering this question, I stumbled upon a very interesting article in Live Science that talks about a Harvard University study that tested my ever-present curiosity about dreaming and learning. Interestingly, the study discovered that dreaming does have a major influence on learning, memory, and even memory consolidation. (more…)

Guest Post by Genevieve Coates:

Just as the human body’s functions begin to slow as we get older, our mental processes decline in a similar fashion. Imagine that!

It’s something we see every day in our daily routines. Where’d I leave my keys? When is that conference? What’s that word…? But, like with any other muscle in the human body, a little exercise, repetition and practice, can improve those mental processes that are starting to slack.

Brain training is no longer a chore with these five apps (listed in no particular order). (more…)

Guest Post by Kathy McGurk:

While we’ve already provided you with 19 reasons to exercise and many ways to keep your brain in shape, Brainscape has recently found more amazing evidence proving that even moderate exercise has a dramatic effect on the functioning, and especially the aging, of your brain! Research is showing that exercise may do more than just make your muscles stronger, but it actually makes your brain stronger too. (more…)

Guest Post by Best Colleges Online:

Memory learning catches a lot of flack these days. Informed educators are often quick to write off rote memorization as an unnecessary and even harmful exercise, instead preferring to teach creativity and problem solving. While we agree that creative, analytical lessons are a great way to learn, it’s worth pointing out that memorization can still play an important role in learning, no matter your age. Read on to find 10 great benefits of memorization in school and beyond.

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If you enjoy your afternoon nap to get the creative juices flowing again, this is great news for you: Studies show that our creative problem solving skills will be improved by rest. But only if you slip into a phase of rapid eye movement (REM), which usually means at least one hour of sleep. During REM sleep, all of the information in our brain flows freely between different networks, which is quite similar to what occurs during dreams: We encounter seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts that can later help us make sense of something. Apparently, REM sleep  has the same effect on our ability to find creative solutions to new tasks and problems we are presented with. So if you want/need to be creative, a nap might be the best approach!

Here is an article posted by the University of California, San Diego that details the study and its results: (more…)