Don't take notes on your laptop

Hello 2015! I can't believe the year passed so quickly and it's already a new year! I had a wonderful winter vacation in the sunny state of Texas, but now it's back to the grad school grind. This quarter is particularly looking to be extremely busy. I'll be taking classes, running my own study, and TAing for the first time. That's a lot to accomplish in just a few months. Luckily the winter weather keeps me inside, so I suppose I'll be more productive.

When it's cold out, why not drive to Wisconsin for some cheese?

As for the main meat of this post, I learned something rather unsurprising, yet interesting, in the class I'm TAing. (TA= Teacher's Assistant) I'm TAing developmental psychology which is an upper divsion psychology course. Before we got into the meat of the class, the professor presented some research she conducted on previous classes. She and several other professors conducted an observational study whereby they looked at technology usage of their students and grades earned in that class. Below are the results.

As you can see, those who didn't use a laptop scored the highest in the course on average. Second highest were those who reported staying on task while using their laptops to take notes in class, although they still earned a significantly lower grade than those with no technology. Students who reported being off-task on the laptop (ie, internet browsing, email, etc) scored just as poorly as those who claimed to be multi-tasking. This result might surprise some, but previous research has shown that humans are incredibly bad at multi-tasking. Having to flit from one thing to another makes us bad at all of them overall. According to this study, you might as well just be off-task!

Personally, I've always noticed that I have trouble focusing on class when I have my comnputer out. I am better at remembering information when I write it, rather than type. It seems old-fashioned, but I much prefer carrying a bunch of spirals around instead of a laptop. I'm just glad real research supports my own habits. I have to wonder, when I'm a professor will I allow my students to use laptops? I think not, though maybe we will be such a technology-driven society that I wont have much of a choice. That's a long way away so I better just focus on surviving this quarter!

The advent of modern day vampires?

No, I don't think this is our potential future...

Sorry, that's a terribly corny title but after hearing about this research I couldn't help it. I'm not talking about the current craze of young adult fiction focusing on Twilight-esque plots. I'm actually referring to some recent research in the mouse model which indicates that young blood may actually help aging animals regain some of their cognitive capacity.

This first article focuses in the regenerative powers of GDF11 for heart hypertrophy. Essentially, they found that by pumping young blood (which has a high concentration of Growth Differentiation Factor 11 in it) into older mice, they could shrink the heart. Intuitively you might think that having a large heart is good, but actually it's not. When the heart muscle enlarges, it becomes less efficient and can be a warning sign for future cardiac problems. Ok, so it may not seem so exciting that 'young blood' can help reverse some of the effects of aging on the heart but what about changes occurring in the brain?

As published in nature, recent research has found that circulating young blood in old animals can also increase synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. This, in turn, improves cognitive function in the aged mice.

This is the animal model typically used for these studies.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, blood transfusions between animals is nothing new in science. Back in the 1600s, scientists at the Royal Institute tried using blood transfusions to see if it would change the temperament of people. They would give a mad man a transfusion of a docile sheep's blood and would wait to see if it made the man calm and rational again. Many such experiments failed (as there is no real mechanism for changing personality based on blood). Still, they can make for some interesting stories.

But back in track, it seems the field of blood transfusions has once again flourished. I would like to direct you to a final recent publication in science which combines multiple studies into a convincing argument for the effects that young blood has on old mice.  Could this pioneering research advent the renewed search for the fountain of youth? Or will popular press turn this into a growing fear of a black blood market?

I think we need to take a step back and realize the research is only occurring in mice. As far as I can tell, we haven't even reached the primate model so there's no guarantee that we would see the same effects in humans. Humans naturally have less GDF11 circulating in the blood stream so we might not see the pronounced effects found in the mouse model.

I do have one suggestion for future epidemiological research. What if we tracked the age of the blood donors and compared that with the outcome of their recipients? Surely there's a database somewhere that could tell us whether people recover faster when they receive a transfusion of young blood versus old? If anyone knows of such a study, I would love to hear the results!