Your monthly round-up of news from the world of thinking and learning:

• Tracking memory at the speed of thought. Just how much information can you store in your brain? New research methods that monitor memories in near real time are helping scientists get a better sense of the brain’s capacity limits. “People can only think about a couple of things at a time,” says one of the researchers, “and they miss things that would seem to be extremely obvious and memorable if that limited set of resources is diverted elsewhere.”

• Could the end of boredom be bad news for creativity? Digital devices have made it easy to avoid boredom, but at what cost? Bored people have the opportunity to connect with their idle thoughts, daydream and let their minds wander. And recent research published in the Creativity Research Journal suggests that bored people come up with more ideas, and more creative ones, than others do.

Some food for thought from the world of thinking this month:

Some food for thought from the world of thinking this month:

Some food for thought from the world of thinking this month:

• Here’s one kind of multitasking that’s not a problem for your brain. While certain multitasking activities have been shown to reduce performance and productivity, visual sampling is one type of multitasking our brains seem to be able to handle well.

• Brain scientists in England to work with schools on how to learn. Citing the need to address the “evidence gap” in applying neuroscience in learning, the Wellcome Trust and Education Endowment Foundation is funding the initiative to research how schoolchildren’s brains process information.

• How you practice affects how you learn. A new study suggests that the more time you spend trying to understand how something works, the better your learning outcomes. According to the researchers, “The study suggests that learning can be improved—you can learn more efficiently or use the

Some food for thought from the world of thinking this month: