A UCLA study found that teaching autistic children to 'think like a reporter' using cognitive reappraisal reduces brain activity in sensory regions and increases activity in areas regulating emotional responses. The technique, already used in cognitive behavioral therapy, shows promise in easing sensory difficulties in daily life.
A study published in The Journal of Neuroscience reveals that the thalamus actively contributes to the development of visual circuits during brain development. Altering thalamic activity changes the number and distribution of interneurons in the visual thalamus and affects the organization of these cells in the visual cortex.
A new UCLA study has found a connection between brain aging and gut biology, suggesting that people's brains may be aging decades before symptoms appear. The study, published in eBioMedicine, analyzed brain scans and stool samples to identify a link between brain communication patterns, gut bacteria, and brain aging.
Researchers found that experiences combining physical spaces with digital technology need a coherent sensory balance to strengthen emotional engagement. The study recommends testing sensory combinations before launch and adjusting their intensity to create a meaningful visitor experience.
A team of researchers at Kyoto University found that traveling waves in rat brains are linked to information transfer in consciousness, but the amount of transfer entropy is higher during anesthesia than wakefulness. The study suggests that the awake brain selectively regulates information for reliable communication.
A new review article synthesizes information on neural traveling waves, concluding they are a computational engine in the visual cortex. These waves allow the brain to build internal representations of the external world, enabling prediction and perception.
Researchers discovered that brain regions switch between shared and independent timing, allowing for flexibility in coordination. This finding provides a new framework for understanding how brain regions communicate and enables the development of brain-inspired artificial intelligence and robotic control systems.
Researchers developed a perception-driven display strategy that balances real-world brightness and virtual image quality. The technology improves real-world visibility while maintaining convincing appearance for virtual content under different lighting conditions.
A new study identifies five audience 'classes' based on people's perceptions of scientists' credibility, including enthusiasts, optimists, moderates, skeptics, and estranged. Researchers found that public estimates of scientific credibility differ depending on the topic and audience class.
A Dartmouth study reveals that people's gaze patterns in new environments contain unique personality preferences. The researchers used eye-tracking data to model individual gaze patterns and create machine-learning models that could distinguish between participants based on their conceptual themes.
A new study led by Dr. Anthony Lapsansky and Dr. Doug Altshuler found that pigeons make slow, subtle eye movements during flight to gather more information about their surroundings. This research has implications for the development of autonomous flying robots or drones, which can learn from bird-like visual strategies.
A virtual reality study with zebrafish shows that the environment experienced by young fish influences the shape and electrical activity of neurons in the eye. Fish growing up surrounded by horizontal stripes develop differently shaped neurons compared to those exposed to vertical stripes, which affects their behavior.
Researchers at Hebrew University of Jerusalem discovered a surprising bias in non-conscious processing: negative spoken words are less likely to reach conscious awareness than neutral ones. This challenges traditional assumptions about how emotional information gains access to conscious awareness.
A new study reveals that smell loss can have a devastating impact on quality of life, comparable to conditions like Parkinson’s, stroke, and diabetes. Patients with smell disorders experience significant emotional, social, and psychological suffering, often rivaling those with chronic illnesses.
Childhood maltreatment alters fear-related brain function and systemic inflammation, modulating their connection. The timing and type of abuse or neglect shape this link, with early trauma affecting threat-regional brain areas and late trauma impacting regulatory brain regions.
Researchers found that asking people to take multiple looks at unfamiliar faces improved identification accuracy by around 8%. This simple approach, which combines decisions made by the same person, outperforms gains from specialist training programs.
Researchers developed a new analysis of sound wave behavior, revealing surprising effects that have been overlooked for decades. At high sound levels, the shape of the wave becomes progressively distorted, with crests compressing into narrow spikes.
A new study suggests that a visual measure of illness perception can effectively convey symptom-related quality of life for patients with chronic lung illnesses. The study found that patients' visual perceptions of their lung disease were equally effective as standard questionnaires and test results in predicting quality of life.
Researchers at Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology found that bitter-tasting herbal extracts stimulate proton secretion in human gastric cells, with polyphenol-rich extracts showing the strongest effects. The study identified three human bitter taste receptor subtypes as key mediators of this response.
Researchers developed a nasal spray that reversibly reduces brain inflammation, restores cellular power plants, and improves memory. The treatment bypasses the brain's protective shield through intranasal delivery, suppressing chronic inflammation and promoting successful brain aging.
A recent study found that colour coding is more effective than traditional nutritional tables in influencing consumers' dietary choices, thanks to the brain's instant processing of benefit and risk signals. Colour-coded labels encourage healthier product selection by harnessing visual attention mechanisms.
A Northwestern University study found that imagination is not just a copy of sensation, but emerges at later stages of processing when the brain represents information holistically. The researchers mapped brain activity during imagination and perception, finding overlap in higher-level association areas.
A research team led by LEE Doyun and KIM Yee-Joon found that the primary visual cortex encodes motion summaries and variability before higher brain regions transform them into category signals. This process, known as ensemble perception, allows the brain to capture the overall structure of a scene at a glance.
A new study from Dartmouth College finds that social information can significantly impact how people experience negative events, including physical pain and mentally demanding tasks. When others describe an experience as painful, individuals tend to feel it that way, even when the actual experience is low in intensity.
A new study found that cannabis intoxication disrupts many types of memory, including verbal, visuospatial, and episodic content memory. Participants who consumed cannabis performed significantly worse than the placebo group on most measures, with significant differences appearing in 15 of the 21 tests.
Researchers have successfully reconstructed videos from mouse brain activity, allowing them to understand how the brain processes visual information. By analyzing the neural activity in the visual cortex, the team created high-quality reconstructions of 10-second video clips, revealing the brain's representation of visual cues.
A new study reveals that animal species with fast-paced ecologies have faster visual perception, tracking prey in mid-air versus grazing slowly across the seabed. This finding supports Autrum's hypothesis and highlights how ecology shapes the tempo of perception across life on Earth.
Research from UNSW Sydney and ANU found that people with average face-recognition ability performed only slightly better than chance in spotting AI-generated faces. Even super-recognisers, who excel at recognizing real human faces, were not immune to being fooled by highly realistic AI-generated images.
Researchers at the University of Rochester found that the brain analyzes global patterns of image motion caused by eye movements to understand how objects move and where they are located in 3D space. This discovery challenges conventional ideas that image motion produced by eye movements is visual noise to be subtracted off.
Research shows that bitter taste receptors can be activated by steroid hormones, influencing physiological processes. The study found that certain hormone types, like progesterone and testosterone, activate these receptors, which may play a role in pregnancy-related taste changes or stress-induced physiological responses.
A COVID-19 survey found that young carers experience higher stress levels with greater care responsibilities. However, they also exhibit positive emotions like a sense of accomplishment and pride. The surveys revealed more pronounced emotional responses in 2024, suggesting growing societal understanding and support for young carers.
Repeated exposure to bodily waste significantly reduces parents' disgust responses, with effects that persist over time. This desensitisation allows parents to care for their children when they are ill, and is an adaptive response to the high-risk environment of childcare.
Research from Karolinska Institutet found that alpha frequency determines body ownership by modulating temporal integration of bodily signals. Faster frequencies led to higher temporal resolution, while slower frequencies caused broader timing differences.
A team from Tokyo Metropolitan University found that numerical information in vision affects spatial perception, introducing complex interplay between object-based processing and number value. Their experiments with squares showed a strong vertical bias when numbers were present, highlighting the impact of the ventral visual stream.
Researchers at Tohoku University demonstrated that taste sensitivity can be enhanced through learning in a novel 'sweet taste recall training.' After just three days of training, participants showed significant improvement in taste sensitivity for all five sweet substances, indicating a sharper perception of sweetness. This finding pro...
A team of researchers from the University of Tokyo used AI and fMRI to study brain activity while participants viewed dance clips. They found that experts exhibited more diverse neural patterns than non-experts, suggesting a greater freedom in artistic expression.
Researchers found that zebra finches categorize calls into about a dozen call-types, similar to how humans hear and group them. The birds' ability to distinguish between calls with similar meaning suggests they have a mental representation of the meaning behind these vocalizations.
Researchers found that a rotating brain wave helps the cortex recover its computational path after a distraction, improving performance in visual working memory tasks. Longer time intervals between distractions also aid recovery.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge found that the human eye has a resolution limit, above which screens provide more information than can be detected. For an average UK living room, a 44-inch 4K or 8K TV does not offer additional benefits over a lower resolution Quad HD TV.
Researchers found that approach-avoidance behavior modulates facial expression recognition, with participants perceiving angry faces more when avoiding the face. This study contributes to understanding the reciprocal relationship between perception and action in social contexts.
Scientists at RIKEN Center for Brain Science found that fruit flies use separate circuits to compute pleasant and unpleasant odors, challenging the idea that 'good' is the opposite of 'bad'. The discovery may contribute to a better understanding of human brain's flavor appreciation mechanisms.
Researchers found that people process sounds differently when walking compared to standing or walking in place. The brain responds more strongly to sounds while walking, and this response changes depending on the direction of the walk.
Hyperthymesics possess extraordinary control over memories of life events, organizing them within a mental space for vivid recall. This ability allows for intense mental travel through time, with some individuals recalling details from different points of view.
Scientists discovered that people struggle to recognize ads on social media due to their ability to blend in with organic content. When participants realized an ad was sponsored, dwell time dropped significantly, indicating a loss of engagement.
A study published in Perception found that people consistently overestimate the steepness of a hill when viewed at an angle, regardless of their eye height. The researchers tested participants' ability to estimate the slope of a wooden ramp while seated, standing on a step ladder, or lying down.
Researchers have established apple snails as a system to study eye regeneration, which may hold the key for restoring vision due to damage and disease. The team discovered that the snail eye is anatomically similar to humans and can regrow itself, with genes such as pax6 playing a crucial role in development.
A new study reveals that the brain has distinct regions for processing 'things', such as rigid objects, versus 'stuff', like liquids or sand. These findings may help the brain plan interactions with different materials, similar to artificial physics engines used in video games.
A UNIGE team has identified a new brain mechanism responsible for modulating sensory signals. This discovery reveals a previously unknown form of communication between the thalamus and somatosensory cortex, which could explain perception variations and open up new avenues for understanding mental disorders.
Researchers found that friends tend to perceive products similarly and exhibit synchronized brain activity when viewed together, even predicting each other's purchasing intentions. As friendships deepen, this similarity strengthens.
A new study by the University of Cambridge found that seaside and blue-colored places are more likely to evoke feelings of nostalgia in people. The research suggests that these environments have visual properties that contribute to positive emotions, including 'fractal property' and high contrast.
A new study published in PNAS Nexus explores how opinions within inner circles influence the perception of social division. The researchers found that consensus within one's circle can exaggerate perceptions of polarization, and that subjective lenses change over time, influencing how individuals perceive societal polarization.
A new study found that people's intuitive perception of biodiversity through visual and audio cues is remarkably accurate, aligning closely with scientific measures. Participants sorted images and audio recordings of forests based on perceived biodiversity, noticing vegetation density and light conditions visually, while acoustically d...
Researchers found that perception of visual diversity was linked to color, vegetation density, lighting, and forest structure, while acoustic diversity was linked to birdsong, volume, and seasonal cues. Participants were more accurate when assessing forest biodiversity through sound alone than through sight alone.
A new study from the University of Bath found that individuals with a higher IQ make more realistic predictions, leading to improved life outcomes. Smarter people are significantly better at forecasting, making fewer errors and showing more consistent judgement compared to those with a lower IQ.
A recent study found that parental firearm storage methods, such as locking and unloading guns, may not be effective in preventing teens from accessing household firearms. Storing additional firearms securely does not necessarily negate the perceived risk of access if at least one gun remains unlocked.
Researchers found that male mosquito brains respond to a wider range of sounds than females and have more diverse responses. This suggests that males use complex acoustic cues to locate females in noisy environments, making traditional traps less effective.
A randomized controlled trial shows that eating more or less sweet-tasting foods didn't change how much people liked sweet flavors. The study found no association between the amount of sweet foods consumed and changes in body weight or biomarkers for diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
A team of researchers investigated the impact of Kyoto's Murin-an garden on viewers' relaxation. They found a correlation between rapid gaze shifts and reduced stress levels. The design features of the well-crafted Japanese garden led to frequent, rapid horizontal shifts in gaze, which induced a calming effect.
Research by MIT neuroscientists reveals that the brain separates its processing of spatial information to maintain cognitive advantage, yet seamlessly blends it with other features. The study also explores how the brain 'hands off' visual information between hemispheres.
A study by Technical University of Munich and University of Vienna found that resistance to restrictive measures is often less robust than feared by policymakers. Once the new rules come into force, people's attitudes towards them decline significantly, revealing a psychological mechanism behind this phenomenon.