Still Face Experiment: Dr. Edward Tronick

Experiences Build Brain Architecture The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through a process that begins early in life and continues into adulthood. Simpler circuits come first and more complex brain circuits build on them later. Genes provide the basic blueprint, but experiences influence how or whether genes are expressed. Together, they shape the quality of brain architecture and establish either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all of the learning, health, and behavior that follow. Plasticity, or the ability for the brain to reorganize and adapt, is greatest in the first years of life and decreases with age. This video is part one of a three-part series titled "Three Core Concepts in Early Development" from the Center and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child.

Artificial intelligence AI research is highly technical and specialized, and is deeply divided into subfields that often fail to communicate with each other.[5] Some of the division is due to social and cultural factors: subfields have grown up around particular institutions and the work of individual researchers. AI research is also divided by several technical issues. Some subfields focus on the solution of specific problems. How Smart Can We Get? How Smart Can We Get? PBS Airdate: October 24, 2012 DAVID POGUE (Host): How smart are you? What Do Babies Think? Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Unstoppable Learning. About Alison Gopnik's TEDTalk Alison Gopnik's research explores the sophisticated intelligence-gathering and decision-making that babies are doing when they play. She offers a glimpse into the minds of babies and young children, to show how much and how fast they learn. About Alison Gopnik What's it really like to see through the eyes of a child?

InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development (Video) Search InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development This edition of the InBrief series addresses basic concepts of early childhood development, established over decades of neuroscience and behavioral research, which help illustrate why child development—particularly from birth to five years—is a foundation for a prosperous and sustainable society. View this video en Español >> Download PDF version of this InBrief >> More from the InBrief series >> Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy How important is reading fiction in socializing school children? Researchers at The New School in New York City have found evidence that literary fiction improves a reader’s capacity to understand what others are thinking and feeling. Emanuele Castano, a social psychologist, along with PhD candidate David Kidd conducted five studies in which they divided a varying number of participants (ranging from 86 to 356) and gave them different reading assignments: excerpts from genre (or popular) fiction, literary fiction, nonfiction or nothing. After they finished the excerpts the participants took a test that measured their ability to infer and understand other people’s thoughts and emotions. The researchers found, to their surprise, a significant difference between the literary- and genre-fiction readers. When study participants read non-fiction or nothing, their results were unimpressive.

PDQ Blog An inside look at some of the top teacher prep programs Today NCTQ released its Teacher Prep Review, which takes a close look at the quality of training provided by 2,420 teacher preparation programs across the country. Our results show that most have a long way to go to get teachers classroom ready from day one. Worried Sick Something strange was happening in New Zealand. In the fall of 2007, pharmacies across the country had begun dispensing a new formulation of Eltroxin—the only thyroid hormone replacement drug approved and paid for by the government and used by tens of thousands of New Zealanders since 1973. Within months, reports of side effects began trickling in to the government’s health-care monitoring agency. These included known side effects of the drug, such as lethargy, joint pain, and depression, as well as symptoms not normally associated with the drug or disease, including eye pain, itching, and nausea. Then, the following summer, the floodgates opened: in the 18 months following the release of the new tablets, the rate of Eltroxin adverse event reporting rose nearly 2,000-fold.1 The strange thing was, the active ingredient in the drug, thyroxine, was exactly the same.

Mapping Brain Connectivity The new field of “connectomics” aims to show how brains behave at a level not previously possible—examining how entire brains are wired together, how wiring changes as brains grow up, and how interactions with the external world affect this wiring. The Lichtman Lab at Harvard University, a partner in the Conte Center at Harvard, pioneered tools to potentially map every connection in a complete brain and has started to map the connectome in mouse brains. In this narrated, 15-minute multimedia presentation, postdoctoral fellow Bobby Kasthuri shares some of the results and insights from his work at the Lichtman Lab, using images and videos that show three-dimensional recreations of actual neural connections in the brain. He also discusses the future direction of this work in helping to understand how early adverse experiences affect connectivity. Internship Opportunity

FOMO Addiction: The Fear of Missing Out As serendipity often strikes randomly, I was reading an article in The New York Times by Jenna Wortham the other day at the same time I was reading the chapter in Sherry Turkle’s new book, Alone Together about people who fear they are missing out. Teens and adults text while driving, because the possibility of a social connection is more important than their own lives (and the lives of others). They interrupt one call to take another, even when they don’t know who’s on the other line (but to be honest, we’ve been doing this for years before caller ID). They check their Twitter stream while on a date, because something more interesting or entertaining just might be happening.

Math Play Research Research Clips The Relationship of Teacher-Child Interactions in Preschool Play to Young Children's Mathematical Abilities Russia: Stray Dogs Master Complex Moscow Subway System <br/><a href=" US News</a> | <a href=" Business News</a> Copy Every so often, if you ride Moscow's crowded subways, you notice that the commuters around you include a dog - a stray dog, on its own, just using the handy underground Metro to beat the traffic and get from A to B.

Feminist Frequency Content Warning: This educational episode contains graphic sexual and violent game footage. In this episode we explore the Women as Background Decoration trope which is the subset of largely insignificant non-playable female characters whose sexuality or victimhood is exploited as a way to infuse edgy, gritty or racy flavoring into game worlds. These sexually objectified female bodies are designed to function as environmental texture while titillating presumed straight male players. Sometimes they're created to be glorified furniture but they are frequently programmed as minimally interactive sex objects to be used and abused.

How to Show Kids You Care Over the years, Search Institute has sold more than six million copies of 150 Ways to Show Kids You Care, a simple yet powerful poster. Like all of Search Institute’s work, the poster translates scientific research into simple, actionable ways that adults can make a positive difference in young people’s lives. A Search Institute team recently visited the Woodson Kindergarten Center in Austin, Minnesota, where the students helped us re-imagine the ideas on the poster. If you could use a quick reminder of why caring for young people is always worth your time, click here to meet the kindergarteners: In 2014, Search Institute will release important new studies and tools that put research to work on behalf of kids.