Word: spatial
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...According to scientists at the University of Bristol, England, flight attendants who travel long distances without taking adequate breaks may be damaging a part of their brains responsible for spatial orientation and some cognitive function...
...short recovery time (five days or fewer in their "home" time zone) between long flights performed worse on reaction-time and vision tests than those on a longer-term recovery schedule. Researchers also pinpointed a specific area of the brain (the right temporal lobe, which controls visual and spatial memory) which became markedly smaller in the short-term recovery group than in the long-term subjects. It may not be permanent - but it sure sounds unpleasant. The brain, scientists speculate, needs at least 10 days to recover from a multiple time zone trip...
...daily basis. These findings, after all, provide us with a great excuse for extending our vacations: You wanted me back at the office for that board meeting next week? Ooh, sorry. No can do. I?ve recently learned that returning from Fiji so quickly could be dangerous to my spatial cognitive functioning. And I really can?t imagine you?d want an employee hampered by such a terrible impediment hanging around the office...
Into this anxious mix have stepped hucksters and marketers who see worried parents as the most promising pigeons. Store shelves groan with new products purported to stimulate babies' brains in ways harried parents don't have time for. There are baby Mozart tapes said to enhance spatial reasoning and perhaps musical and artistic abilities too. There are black, white and red picture books, said to sharpen visual acuity. There are bilingual products said to train baby brains so they will be more receptive to multiple languages. The hard sell even follows kids to the one place you'd think they...
...greatest sources of misunderstanding surrounds the so-called Mozart effect. For years researchers have found that playing background music can improve the spatial skills of listeners, causing many laymen to conclude that creative skills can be boosted too. Last year Harvard University released a study called Project Zero that analyzed 50 years of research on this idea. The studies showed that college students who had listened to music performed better on paper-and-pencil spatial tests, but the effect lasted no more than 15 minutes and then faded away. There was no evidence that the listening improved brain power...