Can you trust your memory? Take these 2 simple tests

WAIT! Before you read further (and I totally contaminate your mind), I suggest you take these 2 simple short tests:
1. Selective Attention Test,
2. Test yourself — What do you believe about memory?

OK, what did you (not) see in the video (more info here)?
How did you compare to survey respondents? (...) Know more at http://goo.gl/U5fkK.

 

Dan Simons interviews people on the street and shows (with furry evidence) that many people have flawed intuitions about their minds.

How aging affects working-memory neuron firing rate and how to improve it

Yale University researchers have found that neural networks in the brains of the middle-aged and elderly have weaker connections and fire less robustly than in youthful ones. “With normal aging, there are impairments in the working memory functions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC)”, says Amy F. T. Arnsten, professor or neurobiology at Yale University Medical School. (...) Know more at http://goo.gl/trDCb.

Credit: Yale University Medical School

Google's Effects on Memory

Google is destroying your memory? Well, OK, maybe... not totally destroying it, just making it unnecessary to rely on friends, libraries, books, notes, and other forms of “transactive memory” (external systems)... Thanks to the rise of Internet search engines, Wikipedia and other Internet tools. (...) Know more at http://goo.gl/xwK56.

Our memories can be twisted under social pressure

Facebook and Twitter groupies: how can social pressure affect your memory? Very, very easily. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute and University College London proved that and they even know what part of the brain is responsible. Know more at http://goo.gl/1IsG7.

How many objects can you hold in mind simultaneously?

Neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have found that cognitive capacity limitations (the ability to hold about four things in our minds at once) reflect a dual model of working memory. http://goo.gl/fjcF3.

Forever online: Your digital legacy

May 3, 2011

Source Link: New Scientist

Your photos, status updates and tweets will fascinate future historians. Will these online remains last forever? In this special report, newscientist.com editor Sumit Paul-Choudhury reports on life, loss, memory and forgetting in the Internet age. It includes: The fate of your online soul: We are the first people in history to create vast online records of (…).