Human Quirks: Mind & Brain

July 19, 2024

Top Headlines

Food Aroma Study May Help Explain Why Meals Taste Bad in Space

July 16, 2024 — A new study on common food aromas may help explain why astronauts report that meals taste bland in space and struggle to eat their normal nutritional intake. This research has broader implications for improving the diets of isolated people, ...

Singing the Science: Using Karaoke to Examine Blushing

July 17, 2024 — A new collaboration explores the neural substrates of blushing in a MRI ...

Psilocybin Generates Psychedelic Experience by Disrupting Brain Network

July 17, 2024 — Researchers report that psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, destabilizes a critical network of brain areas involved in introspective thinking. The findings provide a neurobiological explanation for the drug's mind-bending ...

Cuttlefish Can Form False Memories, Too

July 17, 2024 — During an event, details like what you saw, smelled, and felt aren't stored as a single memory. Rather, they are encoded and stored in your brain separately. To retrieve that memory, those pieces must get put back together. When that doesn't happen ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:18pm EDT

Scientists Find That Small Regions of the Brain Can Take Micro-Naps While the Rest of the Brain Is Awake and Vice Versa

July 16, 2024 — For the first time, scientists have found that sleep can be detected by patterns of neuronal activity just milliseconds long, 1000 times shorter than ...

Origins of Creativity in the Brain

July 15, 2024 — New results could ultimately help lead to interventions that spark creative thought or aid people who have mental illnesses that disrupt these regions of the ...

Two New Species of Psilocybe Mushrooms Discovered in Southern Africa

July 2, 2024 — In a new paper, researchers and citizen mycologists describe the two new species as Psilocybe ingeli and Psilocybe maluti. The paper also contains information on the traditional use of P. maluti by ...

New and Improved Camera Inspired by the Human Eye

July 1, 2024 — Computer scientists have invented a camera mechanism that improves how robots see and react to the world around them. Inspired by how the human eye works, their innovative camera system mimics the ...

Meet CARMEN, a Robot That Helps People With Mild Cognitive Impairment

June 24, 2024 — Meet CARMEN, short for Cognitively Assistive Robot for Motivation and Neurorehabilitation -- a small, tabletop robot designed to help people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) learn skills to ...

Next Platform for Brain-Inspired Computing

June 25, 2024 — Computers have come so far in terms of their power and potential, rivaling and even eclipsing human brains in their ability to store and crunch data, make predictions and communicate. But there is ...

Can AI Learn Like Us?

June 20, 2024 — Scientists have developed a new, more energy-efficient way for AI algorithms to process data. His model may become the basis for a new generation of AI that learns like we do. Notably, these findings ...

Parliamentary Members Use Simpler Language on Hot Days

June 13, 2024 — Climate change has many widespread and complicated effects on the well-being of people and the planet, and a new study has now added a surprising one to the list. After analyzing the language used in ...

Research on the Visual Rabbit Illusion Takes a Leap Forward

June 11, 2024 — Researchers have discovered new variations of an illusion created when we see three rapid flashes in our side vision. Regardless of the position of the second flash, the illusion causes the brain to ...

Protocol for Creating 'Wired Miniature Brains'

June 10, 2024 — Researchers have developed -- and shared -- a process for creating brain cortical organoids -- essentially miniature artificial brains with functioning neural ...

Earlier Headlines

Can Consciousness Exist in a Computer Simulation?

July 19, 2024 — A new essay explores which conditions must be met for consciousness to exist. At least one of them can't be found in a ...

When There's Money to Lose, Phone Usage While Driving Drops

July 10, 2024 — Researchers discovered that feedback plus cash incentives designed with insights from behavioral science reduces phone use while ...

People Feel More Connected to 'Tweezer-Like' Bionic Tools That Don't Resemble Human Hands

June 6, 2024 — Some say the next step in human evolution will be the integration of technology with flesh. Now, researchers have used virtual reality to test whether humans can feel embodiment -- the sense that ...

Babies Use 'Helpless' Infant Period to Learn Powerful Foundation Models, Just Like ChatGPT

June 5, 2024 — Babies' brains are not as immature as previously thought, rather they are using the period of postnatal 'helplessness' to learn powerful foundation models similar to those underpinning ...

Brain Waves Shape the Words We Hear

June 3, 2024 — The timing of our brain waves shapes which words we hear. Researchers used psychophysics, neuroimaging, and computational modeling to test whether neural timing influences perception of more or less ...

AI Headphones Let Wearer Listen to a Single Person in a Crowd, by Looking at Them Just Once

May 24, 2024 — Engineers have developed an artificial intelligence system that lets someone wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to 'enroll' them. The system then plays ...

Psychedelic Drug-Induced Hyperconnectivity in the Brain Helps Clarify Altered Subjective Experiences

May 23, 2024 — A new study shows that the use of psilocybin, a compound found in the widely known 'magic mushrooms,' initiates a pattern of hyperconnectivity in the brain linked to the ego-modifying ...

To Sound Like a Hockey Player, Speak Like a Canadian

May 16, 2024 — Hockey players are famous for their distinctive jargon, but while researching this phenomenon, a linguist and hockey player realized another interesting pattern in hockey speech: American hockey ...

Eurasian Jays Can Use 'Mental Time Travel' Like Humans, Study Finds

May 15, 2024 — Eurasian jays can remember incidental details of past events, which is characteristic of episodic memory in humans, according to a new ...

Some Mice May Owe Their Monogamy to a Newly Evolved Type of Cell

May 15, 2024 — What makes the oldfield mouse steadfastly monogamous throughout its life while its closest rodent relatives are promiscuous? The answer may be a previously unknown hormone-generating cell. Scientists ...

Coming out to a Chatbot?

May 13, 2024 — Today, there are dozens of large language model (LLM) chatbots aimed at mental health care -- addressing everything from loneliness among seniors to anxiety and depression in teens. But the efficacy ...

Cats Purrfectly Demonstrate What It Takes to Trust Robots

May 13, 2024 — Would you trust a robot to look after your cat? New research suggests it takes more than a carefully designed robot to care for your cat, the environment in which they operate is also vital, as well ...

A Fragment of Human Brain, Mapped in Exquisite Detail

May 9, 2024 — Researchers have created the largest synaptic-resolution, 3D reconstruction of a piece of human brain to date, showing in vivid detail each cell and its web of neural connections in a piece of human ...

'Digital Afterlife': Call for Safeguards to Prevent Unwanted 'Hauntings' by AI Chatbots of Dead Loved Ones

May 8, 2024 — Researchers lay out the need for design safety protocols that prevent the emerging 'digital afterlife industry' causing social and psychological ...

Time Zones and Tiredness Strongly Influence NBA Results, Study of 25,000 Matches Shows

May 1, 2024 — The body clock has a significant impact on the performance of NBA players. Data shows vastly better win ratio for home teams from the Western Time Zone Area (PDT) when playing an EDT team, compared ...

Test Reveals Mice Think Like Babies

Apr. 26, 2024 — Are mice clever enough to be strategic? A neuroscientist who studies learning in humans and animals, and who has long worked with mice, wondered why rodents often performed poorly in tests when they ...

A University Lecture, With a Dash of Jumping Jacks

Apr. 24, 2024 — A university professor has found a way to help students -- and himself -- power through long lecture classes: exercise breaks. A new study showed that five-minute exercise sessions during lectures ...

Wake Up and Die: Human Brain Neurons Re-Entering the Cell Cycle Age Quickly Shift to Senescence

Apr. 23, 2024 — Post-mitotic neurons in the brain that re-enter the cell cycle quickly succumb to senescence, and this re-entry is more common in Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study. The phenomenon ...

Can Animals Count?

Apr. 16, 2024 — Researchers have made a groundbreaking discovery regarding number sense in animals by confirming the existence of discrete number sense in rats, offering a crucial animal model for investigating the ...

Last Chance to Record Archaic Greek Language 'Heading for Extinction'

Apr. 2, 2024 — A new data crowdsourcing platform aims to preserve the sound of Romeyka, an endangered millennia-old variety of Greek. Experts consider the language to be a linguistic goldmine and a living bridge to ...