Word: brainful
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Popular wisdom once held that a mind at rest was like an engine idling - not much going on under the hood. To glean insights into how the brain worked, scientists would study only volunteers in action, measuring their physiological or biochemical responses as they completed specific mental tasks. But more recently, thanks in large part to the proliferation of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which precisely maps brain activity based on changes in blood-oxygen levels, neuroscientists have found that important activity in the brain - related in particular to memory and learning - may occur when it is at rest...
...memories and learning; people who take a nap after learning a new task, for instance, remember it better than those who don't snooze. And now a small but compelling new study from the lab of New York University (NYU) cognitive neuroscientist Lila Davachi finds similar evidence that the brain at rest, even while remaining awake, is conducting meaningful activity. "Your brain is doing work for you even when you're resting," says Davachi, who just published a study in Neuron showing that certain kinds of brain activity actually increase during waking rest and are correlated with better memory consolidation...
...lucrative (average annual pay: $1.1 million). Because there are just 53 jobs on an active NFL roster, however, holding on to one of them requires not only supreme athleticism but also the ability to play in pain, whether it's a twisted knee, a broken finger or a bruised brain. Coaches and fans, of course, laud hard hitters. "Guys don't think about life down the road," says Harry Carson, a Hall of Fame ex-linebacker who has postconcussion symptoms like headaches. "They want the car. They want the bling. They want to have a nice life." (See pictures...
...government intervene now? President Obama has in the past expressed support for a playoff system in college football - a goal whose gravity and significance pale in comparison with the goal of reducing the number of brain injuries occurring at all levels of football. Congress has rarely hesitated to assert its right to police professional sports, from pressuring baseball to enforce tougher steroid penalties to threatening to end the NFL's antitrust exemption. Hearings that shed further light on football's concussion crisis would be a more productive use of the power of the congressional subpoena. (See pictures of eccentric college...
...Last Hit The momentum for change is strong. Last spring, for example, the state of Washington passed the Lystedt Law, named for Zackery Lystedt, who as a 13-year-old played with a concussion during a 2006 game. Lystedt collapsed after the game. His brain hemorrhaged, he went into a monthlong coma, and he remains paralyzed on one side of his body. The law requires that all youth athletes suspected of sustaining a concussion or head injury during a practice or game must sit out and may not return to play unless cleared by a licensed medical provider trained...