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Every day, science reveals to us how reading is much more than just a good and rewarding habit. It can strengthen the brain, increase the ability to empathize through a better understanding of the feelings and beliefs of others, help prevent age-related cognitive decline, reduce stress, and help alleviate depression symptoms.

Not just in school, counting is widely used in our lives. Horizontal counting is what is used in most western countries, as well as some eastern ones. This kind of order is known as a “mental number line”; it describes an important way of representing numbers and quantity in space. It was designed to help people make sense of numbers if quantities are represented spatially as a larger gap between numbers should make them less confusable.

Good preparation plays a key role in the final results of almost every aspect of our lives; before an exam, interview, meeting, etc. Although these seem to be all related to adults, preschool children's preparation for school seems to be of high importance as well; it predicts their future engagement and success in class.

There was an old, widely-spread trick about a better way to retrieve important, yet hard-to-stick information in exams: switch a ring you usually wear to another finger; during the exam, when you find its place changed, you would recall the piece of information you encoded. Another way we can trick our minds and do better in exams is by implementing surprise while encoding the piece of information, as a new study by University of Manchester neuroscientists has shown. So, how could surprise facilitate learning or memory retrieval?

"Office work is better for women and fieldwork suits men better..." Some of these stereotypes have been rooted in children’s minds from a very young age, leading boys to think they should have or acquire certain traits because lacking them could be problematic. On the other hand, girls are raised with certain ideas about their abilities and what suits them, regardless of what they truly love or have.

Needless to say, previous experience shapes future attitudes; when you ask someone who was previously attacked by a dog about their views on dogs, s/he would express worry and annoyance towards them, or maybe other pets as well. The same goes for other experiences, good or bad; the more distant and unreachable the object or animal is, the more danger perceived about them, as it becomes hard to get into contact with them to change our minds.

Extinction has always been a source of fear and amazement. While visiting a museum or watching a documentary about extinct species, wonder creeps into our minds and souls as we imagine how these huge creatures had ever lived on the Earth. This amazement exaggerates as we do not know exactly how this happened and what caused such events.

Learning is not only about acquiring knowledge and new information, avoiding mistakes that can cause harm is another key factor, and this works for both cognitive and motor learning. So, while a piece of information about scientific equations would guarantee you a good result in science, slipping or stumbling could help improve and prolong motor learning, according to a new study recently published in eNeuro.

It is widely believed that active thinkers have better opportunities to maintain good brain health over time. People who keep their minds engaged in recent issues, keep good communication channels with others, have good nutrition, leisure habits, level of education, and keep learning throughout their time. Besides this, could being bilingual have a good effect on brain health and slow down brain aging? That is what a recent study from HSE University in Russia and North Umbria University in the UK has investigated.

Nowadays, it is rare to see a child who is not holding a smartphone or a tablet, with his eyes glued to the screen, fully absorbed by what they are watching. Indeed, screen time has been consuming a big chunk of children’s time.