What Learning Looks Like: Creating A Well-Tuned Orchestra In Your Head
TDLC's Dr. John Iversen is featured on KPBS, where he discusses his five-year study on the brains of children who play music in the San Diego Youth Symphony's Community Opus after-school program. Dr. Iversen is just beginning to analyze his data, but early findings suggest playing music is linked to stronger language development!
Read more (KPBS 12/12/17)

Salk neuroscientist receives new NSF award to model the brain

TDLC Co-Director Dr. Terry Sejnowski, together with the California Institute of Technology, will receive over $1 million over 3 years from the National Science Foundation to pursue advanced modeling of the brain. "We will test our models on humans with tasks that require fast reflexes and long-range planning," Dr. Sejnowski explains, "such as riding a mountain bike down a bumpy, twisting trail." (Photo credit: Salk Institute). Read more!

Congratulations Dr. Terry Sejnowski, for being elected as a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow! (12/2017) More about the NAI Fellows Program

Visual intelligence is not the same as IQ
A new study by TDLC's Dr. Isabel Gauthier and her team shows for the first time that there is a broad range of differences in people’s visual ability and that these variations are not associated with individuals’ general intelligence, or IQ. Click here to read more! (Research News at Vanderbilt, 11/7/17) Photo credit: Vanderbilt

Using game-based technology to enhance real-world interpretation of experimental results

Research on how the brain combination of visual, auditory and movement information are typically conducted in a tightly controlled albeit rather impoverished environment. Virtual reality (VR) presents a unique opportunity to maintain stimulus control in a way that places the observer in a truly immersive environment. (NSF Highlight 2017) Click here to read more about this and other TDLC 2017 Highlights

Brain waves during sleep in human infants are differentially associated with measures of language development in boys and girls

Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center researchers, Drs. Sue Peters and April Benasich, at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University-Newark, have shown that brain rhythms in the sleep spindle range, differ between boys and girls, this difference is prominent on the left side of the brain, and is associated with language measures. (NSF Highlight 2017). Click here to read more about this and other TDLC 2017 Highlights

Domain-specific and domain-general individual differences in visual object recognition

Researchers found that performance on Novel Object Memory Tests (NOMTs) varied just as much as on familiar object, but showed more shared variance across each other (about 25%) than is typically observed among familiar object tests (about 11%). Importantly, they verified that the ability measured in the NOMTs is not explained by cognitive skills, because shared variance between NOMTs remained unchanged after controlling for performance on various measures of general intelligence. (NSF Highlight 2017). Click here to read more about this and other TDLC 2017 Highlights

In Appreciation

Carolan Gladden passed away in December 2017. She maintained a life full of passion, liveliness, creativity, purpose, and action for 80+ years and I don't think there was an alternative way of being for her. She was such a force for TDLC, compiling and editing our reports, wrangling with our data-base, sending humorous reminders to our members, and thoroughly enjoying writing great articles for the newsletter. I am forever grateful for all of the demanding work she did for us and for her wizardry in making the process entertaining.

Here is to Carolan and her fascinating life journey - I am so glad that we were able to hear a few of her stories and experience her vibrance!

- Andrea Chiba