In their Freakonomics-for-sports book, “This is Your Brain on Sports,” Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers uncover the hidden influences in sports and use reams of data to investigate questions that tug at every fan. Why are quarterbacks so good-looking (or are they)? Why do we love the underdog? What’s the appeal of the stupid T-shirt cannon? In the following adapted extract, the authors – one a sports journalist, the other a psychology professor – consider whether defense truly wins championships. Super Bowl 50 will feature this season’s presumptive MVP, Cam Newton, against five-time MVP >>>

A Canadian study has found a new benefit to being bilingual, with children who speak two languages better at problem solving than monolingual children. Published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the research looked at vocabularies of 39 bilingual children and 43 monolingual children at the age of 24 months and then again at 31 months. During the second assessment, the team tested the toddlers' cognitive flexibility and memory skills and found that "For the most part, there was no difference between the bilingual and monolingual toddlers," said Diane >>>