A new study, co-authored by Northeastern University professor Charles Hillman and Naiman Khan at the University of Illinois, found that drinking water and staying hydrated increased children’s ability to multitask and improved their reaction times.
“Kids who were more hydrated performed better on tasks of mental flexibility — multitasking — and working memory,” Hillman tells The Post. “This is the first study that used a randomized controlled crossover design to study the relationship of hydration and cognition in children.”
Thursday, Dec 5th4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Beckman Institute 5602
NSP Student Speaker: Mickeal Key
VoteVote for the
2020 sticker design.
Open through Dec. 4.
Beckman Institute Postoctoral Fellowship ProgramBeckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Several postdoctoral fellows programs support outstanding scientists at the Beckman Institute. Apply online by 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 25.
Science on the InsideHow neuroscience graduate students are bringing science education to youth behind bars
Llano Recieves Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
Pulling Apart the BrainThe Interactive 3D brain model from BrainFacts.org.
More Department News
- Cowbirds outsource parenting to other species, but an innate password tells their children to copy cowbird songs. Now, a new paper describes how the cowbird chicks may learn to recognize and sing their own species’ songs. "We kind of opened the paper with this existential question," said Sarah London, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago. "How do you know who you are if no one's shown you who you are?"
- Rogers and Mudar said the primary research aims are to understand challenges adults with cognitive disability deal with every day, and to identify existing and emerging technology that can help. Three segments of the population are part of the study group: Adults 60 and older with mild cognitive impairment, cognitive impairments due to stroke and those who have sustained a traumatic brain injury.
- A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that honey bees can remember positive and negative experiences—such as taking care of their young or fending off an enemy. These memories are then stored in specific areas of their brains, according to how good or bad the experience was. Scientists have long known that vertebrates—animals with tail bones—like ourselves are capable of storing memories of pleasure and pain in distinct brain areas such as this. However, this has never been documented before in the minds of bees. "We wanted to know whether bees, with a tiny brain, devote different parts of it to processing social information that is either negative or positive," Gene Robinson, an author of the study from Urbana-Champaign's Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, told Newsweek.
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Faculty Spotlight
The One Who Is Thinking about Natural Behavior and Interested in Individual Differences, Alison Bell
How would you describe your background? I’m an evolutionary biologist who is interested in behavior. I would say that I have always been interested in animals and animal behavior, but I didn’t really know you could study it in a scientific way until I went to college and I took my first animal behavior course as a freshman. I realized that what I was really interested in was thinking from an evolutionary point of view why animals do what they do. I’ve come to appreciate is that knowing something about how they do what they do is important to understanding why.
Alumni Spotlight
Sean M. Smith, Ph.D. is an Executive Director of Neuroscience Discovery at Merck in West Point, PA. In this role, he directs research for Neurodegenerative disease from target identification through early clinical development. He also leads efforts to identify and translate target engagement and disease progression biomarkers for neurological disorders. Prior to leading the Neurodegeneration department, Sean lead the Psychiatric Disorders department and was the chair of early clinical development teams for MK-8189 (Phase 2, schizophrenia) and MK-8719 (Phase 1, PSP). Sean did his postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the laboratory of Dr Wylie Vale and received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
