Perception News

June 15, 2024

Top Headlines

Brain Regions That Bias the Brain's Response to Pleasure in Bipolar Disorder Identified

June 12, 2024 — Momentary shifts in mood, even those lasting just a matter of seconds, profoundly alter the brain's response to pleasurable experiences in people with bipolar disorder, finds a new ...

Are Mixed Emotions Real? New Research Says Yes

June 13, 2024 — Neuroscientists found that brains display distinct neural activity when experiencing emotions such as bitter-sweetness. The advance could help solve a longstanding scientific debate: whether 'mixed emotions' arise from unique activity in the brain, ...

Just Thinking About a Location Activates Mental Maps in the Brain

June 12, 2024 — Researchers found that mental representations known as cognitive maps, located in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, are activated when the brain performs mental simulations of a navigational ...

Do Traumatic Life Experiences Impact Perception of Distressing Imagery?

June 11, 2024 — Researchers have examined viewer responses to images of distressing and neutrally decorated masks and whether personal life history, particularly past experiences of trauma and difficulty, affected how the person perceived the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 4:54pm EDT

Being Given a Choice Makes Touch More Pleasant, Study Finds

June 13, 2024 — When people are asked for consent before being touched, they have a more pleasant experience of the interaction, researchers have ...

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 ...

First Week After Birth Is Critical for Development of Senses

June 11, 2024 — Researchers have found that the maturation of the senses for smell and touch is closely linked in mice and that this strong interaction takes place within a narrow developmental time window. These ...

Zapping the Right Brain Cells: The Path to Improved Stimulation

June 4, 2024 — Researchers discovered that different types of neurons showed distinct patterns of 'syncing up' with electrical fields. These patterns varied depending on the rate at which the electrical stimulation ...

New Gene Therapy Trial Shows Restored Hearing and Speech in Children Born Deaf, Treated in Both Ears

June 5, 2024 — A new clinical trial of five children with inherited deafness found administering gene therapy in both ears led to restored hearing and speech, and ...

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 ...

New Model Allows a Computer to Understand Human Emotions

June 4, 2024 — Researchers have developed a model that enables computers to interpret and understand human emotions, utilizing principles of mathematical psychology. In the future, the model can help the computer ...

Mapping the Mind With BARseq

June 3, 2024 — A team has scaled up the powerful brain-mapping tool BARseq. The technology is now capable of mapping millions of neurons throughout the brain. Identifying how neural connections are wired up over ...

Infants Hear Significantly More Speech Than Music at Home

May 30, 2024 — A new study has compared the amount of music and speech that children hear in infancy. Results showed that infants hear more spoken language than music, with the gap widening as the babies get ...

How Does 'Not' Affect What We Understand? Scientists Find Negation Mitigates Our Interpretation of Phrases

May 30, 2024 — When we're told 'This coffee is hot' upon being served a familiar caffeinated beverage at our local diner or cafe, the message is clear. But what ...

Incorporating 'Touch' Into Social Media Interactions Can Increase Feelings of Support and Approval

June 12, 2024 — Including 'tactile emoticons' into social media communications can enhance communication, according to a new ...

Haiku May Shine a Light on Humans' Relationship With Insects

June 11, 2024 — Haiku poems have reflected humans' experiences in nature for hundreds of years, including observations of bugs and other wildlife. Recently, researchers analyzed which insects were mentioned the ...

Is It a Sound of Music...or of Speech? Scientists Uncover How Our Brains Try to Tell the Difference

May 28, 2024 — Music and speech are among the most frequent types of sounds we hear. But how do we identify what we think are differences between the two? An international team of researchers mapped out this ...

Researchers Have Located the Brain Network Responsible for Stuttering

May 28, 2024 — An international research group succeeded in identifying the probable origin of stuttering in the ...

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 ...

Study Explains Why the Brain Can Robustly Recognize Images, Even Without Color

May 23, 2024 — New research offers a possible explanation for how the brain learns to identify both color and black-and-white images. The researchers found evidence that early in life, when the retina is unable to ...

Brain Connectivity Patterns Differ in Infants at Familial Risk for Autism

May 22, 2024 — A study has found distinct brain connectivity patterns in six-week-old infants at risk for developing autism spectrum disorder ...

Flicker Stimulation Shines in Clinical Trial for Epilepsy

May 22, 2024 — Researcher leads a new clinical trial testing her flicker technology on patients with ...

Cortex's Self-Organizing Abilities in Neural Development

May 21, 2024 — Researchers have investigated how highly organized patterns of neural activity emerge during ...

Seeing Not Just With the Eyes: Degree of Arousal Affects Perception

May 17, 2024 — The brain modulates visual signals according to internal states, as a new study by neuroscientists ...

AI-Powered Headphones Filter Only Unwanted Noise

May 16, 2024 — Noise-canceling headphones automatically identify background sounds and cancel them out for much-needed peace and quiet. However, typical noise-canceling fails to distinguish between unwanted ...

Imaging Fibrous Structure Abnormalities of the White of the Eye in Myopathic Patients

May 16, 2024 — Abnormalities in the shape of the sclera, the white of the eye, can cause various complications and lead to blindness. However, techniques to observe the sclera in detail, such as its fibrous ...

Unique Brain Circuit Is Linked to Body Mass Index

May 16, 2024 — Why can some people easily stop eating when they are full and others can't, which can lead to obesity? A new study has found one reason may be a newly discovered structural connection between ...

Singing Repairs the Language Network of the Brain After a Cerebrovascular Accident

May 16, 2024 — Singing rehabilitates speech production in post-stroke aphasia. Researchers investigated the rehabilitative effect of singing on the ...

How Does the Brain Turn Waves of Light Into Experiences of Color?

May 16, 2024 — Perceiving something -- anything -- in your surroundings is to become aware of what your senses are detecting. Today, neuroscientists identify, for the first time, brain-cell circuitry in fruit flies ...

Scientists Want to Know How the Smells of Nature Benefit Our Health

May 15, 2024 — Spending time in nature is good for us. And knowing more about nature's effects on our bodies could not only help our well-being, but could also improve how we care for land, preserve ecosystems ...

Singing Researchers Find Cross-Cultural Patterns in Music and Language

May 15, 2024 — Are acoustic features of music and spoken language shared across cultures? Researchers recorded themselves performing traditional music and speaking in their native language. In all 50+ languages, ...

The Crystallization of Memory: Study Reveals How Practice Forms New Memory Pathways in the Brain

May 15, 2024 — A new study has shown that repetitive practice not only is helpful in improving skills but also leads to profound changes in the brain's memory ...

People Without an Inner Voice Have Poorer Verbal Memory

May 14, 2024 — The vast majority of people have an ongoing conversation with themselves, an inner voice, that plays an important role in their daily lives. But between 5-10 per cent of the population do not have ...

What Makes a Memory? It May Be Related to How Hard Your Brain Had to Work

May 13, 2024 — The human brain filters through a flood of experiences to create specific memories. Why do some of the experiences in this deluge of sensory information become 'memorable,' while most are ...