With vacation time for kids officially here, it is likely many of them will be headed towards the closest body of water to cool off, and many of us adults have fond summer memories of enjoying similar fun with our own friends. However, a little known phenomenon likely few of us has heard of— dry drowning – may put a deadly damper on carefree fun unless precautions are taken. Not much is known about dry drowning, also known as a shallow water blackout. A person who dry-drowns typically displays few or no symptoms when the actual drowning is occurring , and sometimes symptoms or effects appear hours after actually being in water. This shouldn’t be a cause to panic or to forbid your children from enjoying the many benefits of swimming and playing in water. Dry drowning is considered rare ; however, there are some warning signs you should learn to spot.

The truth is, the human brain is somewhat limited when it comes to processing visual images. Not everything we see with our eyes actually registers with our brains. There is simply too much visual information to completely process every second; therefore, our brain processes just a fraction of what we see.

The older we get the more important it is to keep our bodies in shape by eating right and exercising, however, exercising the brain is just as important . Studies have shown that individuals above the age of 65, who engage themselves in daily mental activities, ward off ailments such as memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease . Why do certain activities help? Is just reading the newspaper alone enough to combat the symptoms of an aging brain? Learning new strategies, reading novels, doing crossword puzzles, or engaging in other mentally demanding activities stimulates your brain cells . These activities enhance the connection between the brain cells and slow down the rate of age-associated memory loss, but what type of activities should you be doing to guarantee healthy brain function.

In a kind of spooky experiment, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences reveal that our decisions are made seconds before we become aware of them. In the study, participants could freely decide if they wanted to press a button with their right or left hand. The only condition was that they had to remember when they made the decision to either use their right hand or left hand. Using fMRI, researchers would scan the brains of the participants while all of this was going on in order to find out if they could in fact predict which hand the participants would use BEFORE they were consciously aware of the decision.

At one point in time, we have all been told that it is best to learn a new skill slowly. To learn to hit a correct forehand in tennis, you need to practice over and over again. To prepare for a test in school, you should study every day leading up to the exam. This is still great advice, but what if you practice or study consistently and show no signs of improvement

You have probably heard about the Placebo effect. We know new drugs are measured against the placebo effect because a good percentage of people get better just by taking sugar pills. I think a lot of us don’t take the time to consider how crazy this is. Some pretty major health conditions are “cured” by basically the belief that the pill or injection will work. This is obviously power of the mind stuff, but until recently scientists had never been able to actually “see” the placebo effect actually working in the brain.