(From abcnews.com) Sigmund Freud thought dreams were a window into our unfulfilled sexual desires. But the dreams of video game players suggest they have a more practical role: helping us to learn new skills.

"It really looks like if you're not dreaming about it, you're not getting better," says Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School, who carried out one of the video game studies.

The studies don't prove that dreaming about games makes players better. But they strongly suggest that dreaming and learning are intertwined.

That sleep can help with learning and memory is well established. What's more, the more people dream during the light sleep characterised by rapid eye movements (REM), the better they recall memories. But whether the specific content of dreams plays a role in this sleep-learning process wasn't clear.

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Tags: learning, cognition, research, psychology, gaming

Categories: News

(By Joan Aragone, San Mateo County Times) Stop smoking, start exercising, read, learn and maintain connections with others.

According to researchers from UC San Francisco, that's a recipe for maintaining cognitive functions as we age.

In a study examining why some men and women maintain mental acuity over the years while others decline — some to a mild degree, others into dementia — researchers found that elders who maintain cognitive skills share certain characteristics.

They exercise regularly, have at least a high school education, are literate (reading at a ninth-grade level, at least), interact with others through a job, volunteering or other social networks and do not smoke.

"Importantly," the study said, "some of these factors are modifiable."

In other words, it's never too late to start.

For the study, the researchers followed 2,500 black and white men and women, ages 70-79, for eight years, with regular testing of cognitive skills. Over time, researchers found that 53 percent of the study subjects showed normal or minor age-related decline, 16 percent showed major decline and 30 percent maintained their cognitive skills or improved on the tests.

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Tags: learning, cognition, research

Categories: News