Tuesday, December 04, 2007

In The News

Reading this article comparing short term memory between humans and chimps, and the chimps coming out ahead, makes me wonder. Were the chimps also sleep-deprived? Realistically, university students are under chronic sleep deprivation in my experience. It would be interesting to put a group of humans in a cage for a week where they can be well fed and rested, and give them the same training as the chimp, and then see who wins. (I'm not saying I believe the outcome will necessarily be different, I just think the results will be more accurate.)

2 comments:

Lucia said...

I wonder what being able to write stuff down will do to human memory over time -- I used to remember 40 or more phone numbers, and now that my cell phone knows all of them I don't bother. (Not a bad thing, probably, as I definitely lost a big chunk of my brain to motherhood.)

I am running a contest too! Would you spread the word?

Kath said...

Excellent point!