Random Reading

I was traveling last week back to Alabama and I saw a magazine in the airport that caught my attention. It was Scientific American Mind. I read much of it on the plane (in between keeping my daughter from kicking the seat in front of her) and I found much of it very interesting. I learned that words like "um" and "er" may actually help in communication, according to one study. These filler words give the mind a needed 'warning' that an unexpected word is coming. "Words that were preceded by this disfluency were more likely to be accurately recognized later." All according to the University of Edinburgh in the UK. Another interesting article, some people who have suffered brain damage may find it easier to stop smoking. A study with a group of smokers who had suffered stokes and had damage to a region in the cerebral cortex found that some kicked the habit right away and didn't suffer relapse or even strong desire to smoke. researchers are using this information to try and develop drugs targeted to this region to help break the addiction. It's an interesting world out there.