Christine Cyr

Games and puzzles have a long history of “teasing” your brain so that it gets bigger and badder, and eventually smarter. Lumos Labs, a San Francisco-based cognitive neuroscience research company, recently released a series of games—under the title Lumosity—designed to improve a whole gamut of brain functions.

Although autism affects people in different ways, many children with the disorder don't like looking directly at people's faces, because they find expressions unpredictable and disquieting. This makes it hard for them to learn to read emotions in others.

The Transporters, developed by a team at the U.K.'s Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, entices autistic children to look at expressions by superimposing actor's faces onto the fronts of animated toy boats, cable cars, and other kid-friendly vehicles.

The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration may be long past, but plenty of adventurers still share Sir Ernest Shackleton's dream of reaching the south pole. And last Wednesday three Canadians broke the world record for crossing the continent to the pole unaided, traveling 700 miles on snowshoes and skies from Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf to the pole in 33 days, 23 hours, and 30 minutes—beating the last record by nearly 6 days. In case you're wondering, yes, that is crazy fast. Considering the lack of even dogs to help pull the sled, it could also be considered just plain crazy.

Financial institutions aren't the only banks hurting these days. Brain banks—repositories for donated brains—are running low on fresh noggins for research, said a group of scientists from various institutions in the United Kingdom this week. Get past the ewww factor (remember nasty Halloween games and that creep Frankenstein?), and fresh brains are essential for researching neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as Alzheimer's, autism, Parkinson's, and schizophrenia.