Lahkya Armstrong

February 29, 2018

Eng 101

MLA Annotated Bibliography

Reynolds, Gretchen. “How Exercise May Help the Memory Grow Stronger.” The New York

Times, The New York Times, 21 Feb. 2018

Exercise may help the brain to build durable memories, through good times and bad.

Stress and adversity weaken the brain’s ability to learn and retain information, earlier

research has found. But according to a remarkable new neurological study in mice,

regular exercise can counteract those effects by bolstering communication between brain

cells.

Carey, Benedict. “A Brain Implant Improved Memory, Scientists Report.” The New York Times,

The New York Times, 6 Feb. 2018

In this article, scientists have developed a brain implant that noticeably boosted memory

in its first serious test run, perhaps offering a promising new strategy to treat dementia,

traumatic brain injuries and other conditions that damage memory. Stated in the text, the

device works like a pacemaker, sending electrical pulses to aid the brain when it is

struggling to store new information, but remaining quiet when it senses that the brain is

functioning well. The test, reported Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, the

device improved word recall by 15 percent — roughly the amount that Alzheimer’s

disease steals over two and half years. Also the implant is still experimental; the

researchers are currently in discussions to commercialize the technology.

Ray, C. Claiborne. “How Does the Shape of a Head Affect the Brain?” The New York Times, The

New York Times, 1 Jan. 2018

It stated in the article the famous slanted forehead was apparently a mark of high rank

among pre-Columbian Mayans was achieved by various forms of compression of the

head in infancy. It is believed by many researchers to have had no significant effect on

cranial capacity and how the brain worked, the conclusion of a 1989 study of skulls in

The American Journal of Physical Anthropology.The authors speculated that such

damage could have impaired vision, object recognition, hearing ability, memory,

attentiveness and concentration. These factors in turn might have contributed to behavior

disorders and difficulty in learning new information. Other researchers suggest that the

diverging conclusions can be attributed to how the skull measurements are done. The

compression may have affected the shape of the face more than the brain itself, they said.

DiSalvo, David. “The Reasons Why We Can't Put Down Our Smartphones.” Forbes, Forbes

Magazine, 10 Apr. 2017

Stated in the article former Google executive Tristan Harris, interviewed for the episode,

argues that we’ve been fooled into believing the “technology is neutral” argument.

Instead, he says that software makers have mastered a sort of “addiction code” that keeps

people compulsively engaged, such that we can't stand leaving our phones for even a

little while. In other words, the technology has been manipulated to leverage our brains'

habit-forming tendencies. Tech insiders call it "brain hacking," and Harris argues that it's

destroying our focus and relationships.

DiSalvo, David. “Why Sleep Makes Bad Memories Harder To Forget.” Forbes, Forbes

Magazine, 13 Nov. 2017

In the article it states our brains are better at consolidating negative memories over

neutral ones while we’re asleep, according to research. They did an experiment with a

group of volunteers to look straight ahead as they were shown a series of neutral and

negative images on either side of their vision. The brain processes visual information in

the opposite hemisphere from where is was seen; an image viewed to the left will process

in the right hemisphere, an image on the right processes in the left hemisphere. So

researchers were able to associate images with either hemisphere to track the memories

later. Later they completed a memory test. One group took after sleeping the other group

stayed awake. The volunteers who didn't sleep forgot the neutral and negative image

locations about equally. But those who slept had a significantly better rate of recalling the

locations of the negative images over the neutral ones.

Clear, James. “How to Train Your Brain to Think in New Ways.” 1 Dec. 2017

He stated you can train your brain to think better and one of the best way to do this is to

expand the set of mental models you use to think. He said her first discovered what a mental

model was and how useful the right one could be whole he was reading a story about Richard

Feynman, the famous physicist. When people asked how he did it, Feynman claimed that his

secret weapon was not intelligence, but rather a strategy he learned in high school. A mental

model is an explanation on how something works. It is a concept framework, or worldview that

you carry around in your mind to help you interpret the world and understand the relationship

between things.
Fischetti, Mark. “Computers versus Brains.” Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2011

For decades computer scientists have strived to build machines that can calculate faster

than the human brain and store more information. The incredibly efficient brain

consumes less juice than a dim light bulb and fits nicely inside our head. Biology does a

lot with a little: the human genome, which grows our body and directs us through years

of complex life, requires less data than a laptop operating system.

Whitney, Lance. “Are Computers Already Smarter Than Humans?” Time, Time, 29 Sept. 2017

Computers can take in and process certain kinds of information much faster than we can.

Computers enjoy other advantages over people. They have better memories, so they can

be fed a large amount of information, and can tap into all of it almost instantaneously.

Computers don’t require sleep the way humans do, so they can calculate, analyze and

perform tasks tirelessly and round the clock. On the other hand, humans are still superior

to computers in many ways. We perform tasks, make decisions, and solve problems

based not just on our intelligence but on our massively parallel processing wetware — in

abstract, what we like to call our instincts, our common sense, and perhaps most

importantly, our life experiences.