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Comment: Re:If you make people think... (Score 1) 65

by Miow (#29832669) Attached to: Doing Internet Searches Boosts Older Brains

... their brain works more.

That's all there is to it. Age, searching, internet, none of that is relevant other than being conditions under which it can happen. Identical results can be had with kids doing stem completion tasks (E A _ _ _ = E A R T H), college students doing a Stroop task (words naming colors, in that color or a different one), and any brain you can get to sit still and problem solve while stuck inside a tube with horrible noises going on.

TFA is a prime example of someone doing a far too specific test on a general principle and either thinking or pretending to have discovered something. I'm going to go with "pretending" since the new results after practice were seen in the middle and interior frontal gyri, and he claims these results are due to two specific processing tasks, but neglects to mention that the two regions make up more than half the frontal lobes in which there are obviously a great number of things going on, many of which would be occurring during the task, their design is completely incapable of telling the difference between excitatory and inhibitory activation, and there is no word on whether the 'enhanced' neural activity correlated with improved ability to search and/or answer relevant questions, without which one could just as easily make a case that the increased activation was a sign of boredom for having to do the same damn stuff again that they've been doing the past two weeks at home.

Someone needs to do a study and see whether asking hard questions about this stuff of researchers giving talks on it when they clearly don't know enough about what they're doing makes their brains light up in the right places, because if you make people think, their brain works harder. Wouldn't have happened here, because they wouldn't have been forced to answer the questions -- this was just a poster. Anyone can get any poster into one of these conferences as long as it says fMRI on it.

I teach elderly people how to use the internet along with other computer skills. It actually does help them as unlike simply learning something new, the internet and computer skills quickly leads onto a range of other skills that they can pick up quickly by themselves. If you think young people are good at picking up computer skills you should try working in primary schools with mainly young women teachers. Most can hardly get past simple word processing. The difficulty of teaching the elderly in not to do with their brain power but they are not motivated enough to want to learn as they have few others to impress. I also teach martial arts, scuba diving, bebop guitar, and DIY skills. Mainly to younger people - who want life pout on a plate for them. Oh yes, I'm 79 you can check out who I am by looking up my various web sites on how to make movies, for children.

Comment: With a Computer Science Degree, an Old Man At 35? (Score 1) 918

by Miow (#27368477) Attached to: With a Computer Science Degree, an Old Man At 35?
I was 40 before I ever saw a computer. At 45 I had written books on them. At 78 I teach computer animation. It depends on your market. If you choose to specialise and study your market well you can survive doing just about anything. My experience is that most degrees involve learning much of what you don't need or may never use. Pick your market firt then learn what you need to know, who you need to know, and how you need to apply it. You may find you even need a degree.

Comment: Decline begins at 27 (Score 1) 381

by Miow (#27237879) Attached to: Brain Decline Begins At Age 27
I've never attended university, or passed any exam of any sort other than a driving test which I took for the first time at 54. I did take up the guitar to learn bebop at 70 though, but that was after I won a film award at 68 but before I started gym classes at 72. At 78 I do find my mind declining, but that is because I find learning programming quite hard, though it appears from my acquaintances, not as hard as it is for the 30-somethings who have other things to do. My friends in the 70-80s write books, go scuba diving, play jazz, run companies. Some have degrees and some not. Those that have feel that it doesn't make much difference providing you are generally active and not too much concerned with what you are supposed to be doing and concentrate on what you want to do.
