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In this issue:
A. August Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter was archived
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news158.html
B. NO (Nitric Oxide) for Snakebite
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/nosnake.html
C. Serbian Translations of Neuroscience for Kids Pages
Conduction Velocity
10% of the Brain Myth
Who, What, Where of Neuroscience
In August, 2 new figures were added and 30 pages were modified.
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"See All You Can See" is a Web site created by the National Eye Institute
to teach kids (7-10 years old) about vision and protecting the eyes. The
site has some simple interactive, Flash games to help kids learn about the
parts of the visual system and eye safety. The games can also be
downloaded as PDFs. From the web site, adults can access a sports eye
safety page and order printed copies of National Eye Institute materials.
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A new study by researchers at the University of California (San Diego) suggests that heavy backpacks may change the anatomy of the spine and contribute to back pain. The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning to look at the spines of eight children (3 boys, 5 girls, average age 11 years) when they carried backpacks with 4, 8 and 12 kg loads.
As the weight of the backpack increased, the scientists found that lumbar disks in the kids' back became compressed. The heavier packs also caused curvatures in the kids' spines. As you might imagine, when the children carried heavier backpacks, they reported more pain.
The American Physical Therapy Association recommends that children carry backpacks no heavier than 15% of their body weight. Yet, 55% of the children in one survey carried packs that weighed more than this recommended amount.
How much does your backpack weigh? Weigh yourself on a scale with and without your backpack to determine the weight of the backpack. Does your backpack weigh more than 15% of your body weight?
References:
1. Neuschwander, T.B., Cutrone, J., Macias, B.R., Cutrone, S., Murthy, G., Chambers, H. and Hargens, A.R., The effect of backpacks on the lumbar spine in children, Spine, 35:83-88, 2010.
2. Is Your Childs Backpack Making the Grade? (American Physical Therapy
Association: http://www.apta.org/Media/Releases/Consumer/2009/4/14/)
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These sticky songs are called "earworms." Back in a 2004 Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter, I described the research of Dr. James Kellaris who studied earworms. Dr. Kellaris surveyed 559 people and found that almost all of them all (97.9%) had experienced an earworm. Women and musicians were found to suffer from earworms more frequently than men and non-musicians.
Researchers in the United Kingdom recently provided more details about earworms. In one study, C. Philip Beaman and Tim I. Williams surveyed 103 people (15-57 years old) in different public places. They wanted to know a) how earworms disrupted normal behavior, b) how earworms affected emotions, c) how often earworms occurred, d) how long earworms lasted, e) how easy it was to eliminate earworms, and f) what people thought caused earworms.
Beaman and Williams found that for the majority of people (88.2%), earworms lasted several hours, but people did not find these stuck songs to be too much of a problem. Earworms lasted longer, were more difficult to eliminate and were more troubling for people who said that music was important to them, but the researchers did not find any differences in the reported frequency of earworms between men and women. The most common way people got rid of earworms was by "specific musical displacement." In other words, people thought of a different song, listened to a different song, sang a different song, or played a musical instrument.
In a second study, Beaman and Williams had nine people keep diaries of their earworm experiences. Of the 269 reported earworms, 199 were caused by different songs. About one-third of the earworm episodes were reported as unpleasant and one-half of the episodes were reported as pleasant.
In my own experience, earworms are never pleasant: not even if they are placed there by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
References:
1. Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter article about earworms: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news88.html#ear
2. Beaman, C.P. and Williams, T.I., Earworms ('stuck song syndrome'):
Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts, British J. Psychology,
101:637-653, 2010.
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B. The September 2011 issue of Scientific American Mind is on newsstands
now. This magazine includes the articles "Splintered by Stress: The Good
and Bad of Psychological Pressure" by Mathias V. Schmidt and Lars Schwabe,
"The Many Faces of Happiness" by Suzann Pileggi Pawelski, "A Tale of Two
Rodents" by Kelly Lambert, "Primal Brain in the Modern Classroom" by David
Geary, "Fight the Frazzled Mind" by Robert Epstein and "Passion for
Possessions: Mine!" by Bruce Hood.
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A. 82.7% of the people agreed with the statement: "People suffering from amnesia typically cannot recall their own name or identity." 100% of professors with more than 10 years of memory research experience (the expert group) disagreed with the statement.
B. 63.0% of the people agreed with the statement: "Human memory works like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later." 100% of the experts disagreed with this statement.
C. 54.6% of the people agreed with the statement: "Hypnosis is useful in helping witnesses accurately recall details of crimes." 87.6% of the experts disagreed with this statement.
D. 77.5% of the people agreed with the statement: "People generally notice when something unexpected enters their field of view, even when they're paying attention to something else." 81.2% of the experts disagreed with this statement.
E. 47.6% of the people agreed with the statement: Once you have experience an event and formed a memory of it, that memory does not change." 93.8% of the experts disagreed with this statement.
Reference: Simons, D.J. and Chabris, C.F. What People Believe about How
Memory Works: A Representative Survey of the U.S. Population. PLoS ONE
6(8): e22757. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022757, 2011.
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Help Neuroscience for Kids
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Your comments and suggestions about this newsletter and the "Neuroscience for Kids" web site are always welcome. If there are any special topics that you would like to see on the web site, just let me know.
Eric
Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.
(e-mail: chudler@u.washington.edu)
(URL:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html)