Saturday, August 16, 2014

Shaking up the body may improve attention












Not written by Louis Sheehan





SCIENCE NEWS

Shaking up the body may improve attention

6:07pm, June 30, 2014
Young adults scored better on tests after sitting in a vibrating chair, a new study shows.
wavebreakmedia/shutterstock.com

Guest post by Chris Riotta
If you’ve been having some problems with your memory, perhaps it’s time to shake things up a bit.
Sitting for just two minutes in a vibrating chair improved young adults’ attention to detail, researchers report June 20 in PLOS ONE.
The team used a chair placed on a vibrating platform to study the effects of whole-body vibrations in a group of 133 healthy young adults. Participants scored higher on four simple tests of attention and reaction time after they sat on the vibrating platform than they did when taking the tests with the platform turned off.
Whole-body vibration may be a way for people who have physical limitations to get the cognitive benefits of exercise, the authors suggest.






SCIENCE NEWS


Science Stats

Westerners sleep more than people from Eastern nations

10:00am, June 29, 2014
EARLY RISERS  Sleep schedules vary from country to country, with social demands like work and study providing the primary incentives to stay up (sleep times shown above in darker blue).
J.C. Lo et al/Frontiers in Neurology 2014, adapted by S. Egts
Magazine issue:


People in Western nations tend to sleep more: seven to eight hours per night on average, compared with less than seven hours in many Eastern nations. A new study suggests that differences in the timing of the natural light-dark cycle are not to blame, but rather differing schedules for work and study. People in Singapore stayed up later on work days but rose around the same time as people in the United Kingdom. Schedules were more similar on free days.


Not written by Louis Sheehan












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