Do you have difficulty making decisions? Do you make decisions that you later regret or lead to worsening life situations?

The ability to make good decisions may be more important than intelligence in producing better life outcomes according to a study being done by Carnegie Mellon University and the RAND Corp.

The results of the study imply that teaching people decision-making skills could improve their quality of life.

“Intelligence doesn’t explain everything. Our results suggest that people with good decision-making skills obtain better real-life outcomes, even after controlling for cognitive ability, socio-economic status and other factors,” said Wändi Bruine de Bruin, a researcher in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and the lead author of the study. “That is good news, because decision-making skills may be taught.”

Carnegie Mellon has a short version of the test online that you can take yourself to see how you score in comparison with other participants. The test takes about 15 minutes and is confidential but you do need to leave an email address for them to mail the test results back to you.

Read the article Good Decision-Makers May Be Made,
Not Born, Says Carnegie Mellon Study and take the test.

Research published by Grand Valley State University reports the conclusion that when it comes to brains, bigger is better.

Larger animals generally tend to have larger brains but part of the reason was assumed to be the need to control their larger bodies. But researchers found one other reason: larger animals also tend to be smarter.

The difference lies in cognitive ability related to environment. Domain-general cognitive ability allows species to adapt and deal with changes in the environment, whereas domain-specific skills are suited only to particular environments.

Larger animals may need to be smarter to control aspects of their environment, and because they generally live longer, they may have more to gain from being flexible and adaptable as the environment is more likely to change during their lifetimes.

Although the researchers concluded that it is not always necessary to adjust for the correlation between body size and brain size in comparing intelligence across species, they do allow that body size cannot always be dismissed as a factor - larger bodies may need larger brains to accomodate greater neural traffic. And although they do not assert that elephants or whales are smarter than humans or that men are more intelligent that women, in general, brain size seems to be linked with intelligence.

Bigger is Smarter!

Can you recall when the Boxer Rebellion occurred but forget where you left your car keys? Do you remember the name of the 13th president but have a hard time bringing a specific word to mind when you need it? You may be suffering from too much memory.

Research at the Columbia University Medical Center indicates that the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus, the part of the brain where learning and memory are seated, can actually cause you to experience more limited working, or short-term, memory.

Apparently, forgetting some information is essential to being able to access short-term memory. Storing too much information interferes with working memory. In experiments in which mice had the neurogenesis in the hippocampus blocked, they were better able to navigate a maze and locate food in the maze.

The researchers suggest that forgetting some older and useless information makes room for newer and useful information such as where your car is parked in a large lot.

But which information is useless, and is all older information just taking up storage space you could use for something newer and more immediate? It is said of Albert Einstein that he was often distracted and forgetful. He described his wild hairstyle as simply the result of doing nothing with it. But the man who reportedly never untied his shoes because he couldn’t remember to tie them again, was busy pondering the nature of the universe.

According to The Association for Distracted People, “distractedness actually reflects a high level of concentration (on something else)”.

Alcoholics have smaller brain volumes, probably due to the toxic effects of ethanol that causes the brain to shrink more with aging - but a new study shows that the brains of children of alcohol-dependent parents have reduced intracranial volume before they even take a drink.

The study by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the first to demonstrate that for children of alcoholics, brain size is affected before the onset of alcohol dependence.

Intracranial volume, or ICV, was found to be about 4 percent smaller in adult children of alcoholic parents than in adults who had no family history of alcoholism. IQ scores in alcoholic individuals whose parents were also alcoholic were found to average 5.7 points lower than in alcoholics whose parents were not alcohol-dependent.

The authors note that a possible implication of their findings is that the increased risk for alcoholism among children of alcoholics may be due to a genetic or environmental effect, or both, related to reduced brain growth.

“Although ICV is known to be influenced primarily by genetic factors,” says Dr. Daniel Hommer, senior author of the study,“many studies have found that living in an enriched environment promotes central nervous system growth and development. It seems likely that alcoholics, in general, are raised in less than optimal environments and thus that genetics and environment both contribute to the smaller ICV observed in family history positive alcoholics.”

Study Finds Reduced Brain Growth in Alcoholics with Family Drinking History