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DailyDirt: Stop Filling Your Brain With Nonsense

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Dec 6th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

You are what you eat, and your brain reflects what you've taught it. It shouldn't be too surprising that our brains change based on what we do with them. There's some interesting science behind why you never forget how to ride a bike, and here are a few more examples of lessons our brains seem to keep forever.

Being bilingual was once considered to be detrimental to cognitive processes, but more studies are finding evidence that bilingualism can enhance certain mental skills. Bilingual people appear to be better than monolinguals at monitoring their environment more keenly, noticing changes that monolinguals miss out on. [url]
Children who learn how to play a musical instrument have detectable differences how in their brain responds when listening to complex sounds (even years after they've stopped playing). Some researchers claim to be able to tell whether a person has ever played an instrument only by looking at his/her brain scans. [url]
Karate experts can deliver blows with much greater force than might be expected by simply measuring their muscle strength, and measured brain structure differences seem to explain that years of training help the cerebellum to coordinate muscle movements and deliver more forceful punches. Now let's see some brain scans for gamers who are good at QWOP.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: bilingual, brain, cerebellum, cognitive processes, karate, music, qwop

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Anonymous Coward, 6 Dec 2012 @ 5:37pm

So I guess it would be super double awesome to be a bilingual black belt musician.
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- McCrea (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 6:04pm
  
  Re:
  Or just eat the brain of one.
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Graham J (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 6:25pm

The is why advertising should be avoided.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2012 @ 9:44am

Of course a martial artist (who knows what they're doing) can generate more force than linear math says. We use our entire body to launch a solid punch, not just our arm. The linear math doesn't add up very well because it generally ignores a great host of factors, mainly all our cheap tricks to extract that extra little bit of oomph from a strike.
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