Sleep quality influences cognitive performance of autistic, neurotypical children

One night of poor sleep significantly decreases performance on intelligence tests in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and also in neurotypical children (without ASD). The researchers observed the EEG measures of 13 autistic children and 13 neurotypical children (children with a mean age of 10 years old without an intellectual deficiency or sleep problem and who were not on medication) and found that disruptions in protective brain waves during sleep are associated with lower results on verbal IQ tests.

The analogy that builds human thought

Only human beings (with rare exceptions) are able to grasp analogies. A study carried out in collaboration with SISSA (and the Northwestern University) has investigated the origin of this ability…

Calorie-Counting Apps May Not Help You Lose Weight

MyFitnessPal is a popular phone app that reveals the number of calories in a serving of any of the 5 million foods whose vital statistics are stored in database. When Randy Dotinga wrote about a study focusing on the app, he noted that the study “doesn’t conclusively debunk” the app, but that it wasn’t clear if the app actually helped anyone lose weight. The interesting thing is that the study author was Dr. Brian Yoshio Laing, who did and still does recommend MyFitnessPal to his patients. Thoughts on this could go either way. As a general rule, it isn’t considered kosher for anyone other than an app’s developers to work on a study of a product or process. Once the thing is out in the world