Perception News

May 8, 2024

Top Headlines

Why Getting in Touch With Our 'Gerbil Brain' Could Help Machines Listen Better

May 7, 2024 — Researchers have debunked a 75-year-old theory about how humans determine where sounds are coming from, and it could unlock the secret to creating a next generation of more adaptable and efficient ...

How the Brain's Arousal Center Helps Control Visual Attention Too

May 2, 2024 — Neuroscientists have artificially increased neuronal activity in part of the brain by briefly shining light on genetically modified neurons. They saw that this manipulation selectively enhanced performance in non-human primates performing a visual ...

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 knew how to perform well. With a simple ...

Network Model Unifies Recency and Central Tendency Biases

Apr. 24, 2024 — Neuroscientists have revealed that recency bias in working memory naturally leads to central tendency bias, the phenomenon where people's (and animals') judgements are biased towards the average of previous observations. Their findings may hint at ...

Latest Headlines

updated 6:50pm EDT

Human 'Neural Compass' Pinpointed in New Study

May 6, 2024 — A pattern of brain activity that helps prevent us from getting lost has been identified in a new ...

Breakthrough Paves the Way for Next Generation of Vision Implants

May 7, 2024 — A group of researchers have created an exceptionally small implant, with electrodes the size of a single neuron that can also remain intact in the body over time -- a unique combination that holds ...

Illusion Helps Demystify the Way Vision Works

Apr. 26, 2024 — Research shows that a certain kind of visual illusion, neon color spreading, works on mice. The study is also the first to combine the use of two investigative techniques called electrophysiology and ...

In the Brain, Bursts of Beta Rhythms Implement Cognitive Control

Apr. 23, 2024 — Bursts of brain rhythms with 'beta' frequencies control where and when neurons in the cortex process sensory information and plan responses. Studying these bursts would improve understanding of ...

Eye-Opener: Pupils Enlarge When People Focus on Tasks

Apr. 22, 2024 — Normally, a person's pupils naturally widen (or dilate) in low-light environments to allow more light into the eye. However, in a new study, researchers reported that a person's pupils also dilate ...

Perfect Balance: How the Brain Fine-Tunes Its Sensitivity

Apr. 18, 2024 — A sensitive perception of the environment is crucial for guiding our behavior. However, an overly sensitive response of the brain's neural circuits to stimuli can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders ...

Are These Newly Found Rare Cells a Missing Link in Color Perception?

Apr. 15, 2024 — Using adaptive optics, scientists have identified elusive retinal ganglion cells in the eye's fovea that could explain how humans see red, green, blue, and ...

Paper: To Understand Cognition--and Its Dysfunction--Neuroscientists Must Learn Its Rhythms

Apr. 17, 2024 — Thought emerges and is controlled in the brain via the rhythmically and spatially coordinated activity of millions of neurons, scientists argue in a ...

Can Animals Count?

Apr. 15, 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 ...

Everyday Social Interactions Predict Language Development in Infants

Apr. 8, 2024 — Researchers found that when the adult talked and played socially with a 5-month-old baby, the baby's brain activity particularly increased in regions responsible for attention -- and the level of ...

Scent Sells -- But the Right Picture Titillates Both Eyes and Nose, Research Finds

May 2, 2024 — Scented products with relevant images on their packaging and branding, such as flowers or fruit, are more attractive to potential customers and score better in produce evaluations, new research ...

The Sense of Smell Is Influenced by Cues from Other Senses

Apr. 5, 2024 — The sense of smell is highly influenced by the cues from other senses, while the sense of sight and hearing are affected to a much lesser extent, shows a new ...

Body Mapping Links Our Responses to Music With Their Degree of Uncertainty and Surprise

Apr. 4, 2024 — Music holds an important place in human culture, and we've all felt the swell of emotion that music can inspire unlike almost anything else. But what is it exactly about music that can bring on ...

Researchers Map How the Brain Regulates Emotions

Apr. 3, 2024 — A new study is among the first of its kind to separate activity relating to emotion generation from emotion regulation in the human brain. The findings provide new insights that could help inform ...

Chicks Show Vision and Touch Linked at Birth

Apr. 2, 2024 — Study reveals that newly hatched chicks can instantly recognize objects with their vision, even if they've only ever experienced them by ...

How the Brain Senses Body Position and Movement

Apr. 2, 2024 — Researchers use neural networks to study proprioception, the sense the brain uses to 'know' the body's movement and ...

I Spy With My Speedy Eye: Scientists Discover Speed of Visual Perception Ranges Widely in Humans

Apr. 1, 2024 — Using a blink-and-you'll-miss-it experiment, researchers have discovered that individuals differ widely in the rate at which they perceive visual signals. Some people perceive a rapidly changing ...

New Software Enables Blind and Low-Vision Users to Create Interactive, Accessible Charts

Mar. 27, 2024 — Umwelt is a new a system that enables blind and low-vision users to author accessible, interactive charts representing data in three modalities: visualization, textual description, and ...

A Decade of Aphantasia Research: What We've Learned About People Who Can't Visualize

Mar. 27, 2024 — People who can't visualize an image in their mind's eye are less likely to remember the details of important past personal events or to recognize faces, according to a review of nearly ten ...

If Faces Look Like Demons, You Could Have This Extraordinary Condition

Mar. 22, 2024 — Imagine if every time you saw a face, it appeared distorted. Well, for those who have a very rare condition known as prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), which causes facial features to appear distorted, ...

Brain Recordings in People Before Surgery Reveal How All Minds Plan What to Say Prior to Speaking

Mar. 19, 2024 — A new study in people undergoing surgery to treat seizures related to epilepsy shows that pauses in speech reveal information about how people's brains plan and produce ...

How Neurochemicals Affect fMRI Readings

Mar. 19, 2024 — A new study shows how neurochemicals can influence blood vessels. The findings may change how researchers interpret results from functional magnetic resonance imaging ...

Deciphering the Role of Bitter and Astringent Polyphenols in Promoting Well-Being

Mar. 18, 2024 — Polyphenols, abundant in fruits, vegetables, tea, and coffee, offer potential health benefits. However, owing to low bioavailability, the mechanisms underlying their beneficial effects remain ...

First Recognition of Self in the Mirror Is Spurred by Touch

Mar. 13, 2024 — Most babies begin recognizing themselves in mirrors when they are about a-year-and-a-half old. This kind of self-recognition is an important developmental milestone, and now scientists have ...

Researchers Expand Our Understanding of How the Body and Brain Communicate

Mar. 12, 2024 — Researchers investigating how exactly the brain processes the incoming stream of information from the heart and lungs, discovered that specific neurons in the thalamus are actively involved in ...

Dangers of Smell Impairment Highlighted in New Research

Mar. 11, 2024 — More than a third of people who self-identify as having a smell disorder have had at least one gas safety scare in the last five years, according to new ...

Shared Blueprint in Brain Development Across Different Functional Areas

Mar. 11, 2024 — Researchers have investigated brain development to understand how different areas of the brain become specialized in handling information such as vision, sound, touch and ...

Lack of Focus Doesn't Equal Lack of Intelligence -- It's Proof of an Intricate Brain

Mar. 8, 2024 — Imagine a busy restaurant: dishes clattering, music playing, people talking loudly over one another. It's a wonder that anyone in that kind of environment can focus enough to have a ...

How the Brain Coordinates Speaking and Breathing

Mar. 7, 2024 — Researchers discovered a brain circuit that drives vocalization and ensures that you talk only when you breathe out, and stop talking when you breathe in. This circuit is under control of a brainstem ...

Foot-Eye Coordination: How Our Vision Changes in Rhythm With Our Walking

Mar. 7, 2024 — Scientists have found our visual perception dips as our feet hit the ground. Further understanding this could help develop early diagnostics for neuromuscular or psychiatric illness; understand ...