It's hard to get little kids to wash their hands. But who better to model hand hygiene for a toddler than the toddler herself?
Clever use of photos to inspire sustained behavior change via the dad of Grace's friend & classmate, Mia. A neat illustration of an intervention intended to provoke a certain change in health behavior through a visual reminder not only of the task but of task-specific self-efficacy.
Repeats, reruns, repetitions and repeats (10/17/09)
Why do we love repetition? And why do we need it? This week (in an all-new episode), we look at the joys and trials of repeating things.
Right click to Download Repeats, reruns, repetitions and repeats (10/17/09)
[mp3 file: runs 1:26:44]
CBC Radio One, "Definitely Not the Opera."
Show entitled:
"Repeats, reruns, repetitions, and repeats."
Interview with Professor Laura-Ann Petitto, Diana Deutsch and others. October 17, 2009.
q2cfestival.com
News and Views
Nature 461, 50-51 (3 September 2009) | doi:10.1038/461050a; Published online 2 September 2009
Neuroscience: Persistent feedback
Top of pageAbstract
How does the brain remember the consequences of our actions? Persistent activity in the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia may be crucial for learning correct actions through experience.
Do you jump out of bed when you hear the alarm clock ring in the morning? Or do you push the snoozer? Your choice will depend on the consequences of similar actions in the past. Typically, if an action triggered by a stimulus leads to a pleasant outcome, such as food or safety, we are more likely to perform the same action on re-encountering the same stimulus1. Therefore, a fundamental building block in shaping behaviour is the relationship between a sensory event, a chosen action and its consequences, but how the brain stores this information is still a matter of speculation. A recent paper in Neuron by Histed et al.2 sheds some light on these mechanisms by showing that neurons in the primate prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia display persistent activity that is related to the outcomes of previous actions.
A repost...
It might look somewhat disturbing, but the picture that accompanies this entry is a snapshot of a two day old baby that is healthy and sound asleep! She is one of fourteen newborns that participated in a recent listening experiment, a collaboration between the Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and our research group at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In this project we are interested in how newborn infants perceive the musical world around them and in how far certain musical skills are innate.
W. Tecumseh Fitch 
School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, KY6 9JP, UK
Rhythmic entrainment, long believed an exclusive prerogative of humans, has now been demonstrated in several bird species, raising interesting questions about the evolutionary biology of music.
