Neuroscience News - AI, Neuroscience, Psychology Research

·July 18, 2025·5 min read

Tiny AI Models Reveal How We Really Make Decisions

Decision-making often involves trial and error, but conventional models assume we always act optimally based on past experience. A new study used small, interpretable artificial neural networks to uncover how humans and animals actually make choices—revealing the suboptimal strategies we often use.

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Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·July 18, 2025·4 min read

Illusory Beliefs Fuel Risky Health Choices

Beliefs in pseudoscientific health ideas can undermine trust in conventional medicine and lead to riskier health decisions, a new study finds. Researchers analyzed over 1,500 participants and showed that stronger illusory beliefs were linked to higher use of unvalidated therapies and lower adherence to evidence-based practices.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·July 18, 2025·7 min read

Sleeping Brain Reveals Clues to Hidden Disorders

The brain remains highly active during sleep, and mapping this activity can reveal early signs of neurological and sleep disorders. Using rare intracranial EEG data, researchers refined methods to distinguish functional areas of the cerebral cortex based on their unique electrical activity, even at rest.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·July 18, 2025·3 min read

Innovative Therapies Help Restore Vision Loss in Macular Degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) remains a leading cause of vision loss, but new therapies are reshaping its treatment. Recently approved drugs, pegcetacoplan and avacincaptad pegol, target the complement system to slow dry AMD progression.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·July 18, 2025·5 min read

How the Brain Decodes Social Emotions and Anxiety

The anterior temporal lobe (ATL) plays a key role in interpreting social hierarchies and facial emotions, offering insight into anxiety and mood disorders. A research project used advanced imaging techniques to overcome past challenges in studying the ATL, revealing its strong activation during social and emotional decisions.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 18, 2025·5 min read

Sleep to Consciousness: How the Brain Transitions from Dreams to Reality

Each morning, your brain undergoes a precise sequence to shift from sleep to wakefulness, reorienting you to the world. A study using high-density EEG recordings found that awakening begins in frontal regions and spreads backward, with distinct patterns depending on whether you wake from REM or non-REM sleep.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·July 17, 2025·4 min read

Neurons Store Backup Energy to Power the Brain Under Stress

New research has uncovered that neurons store their own glycogen, acting as “backup batteries” to keep the brain functioning during energy stress. Using worms and advanced biosensors, scientists found that neurons can tap into glycogen reserves, especially when oxygen or mitochondrial function is limited.

This shows two people, a dog, and a question mark.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·July 17, 2025·4 min read

Can Dogs Really Judge Character?

Many dog lovers believe dogs can sense who to trust, but research suggests the reality may be more complex. A study of 40 pet dogs tested whether they form reputations of humans by observing how those humans treated another dog.

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Featured Neuroscience

·July 17, 2025·7 min read

Motion is Your Signature: How Dynamic Cues Reveal Identity

New research highlights the critical role of dynamic motion in recognizing familiar people, beyond static facial or body features. Faces, voices, and body movements each carry unique, idiosyncratic motion patterns — or “dynamic fingerprints” — that help perceivers identify individuals, even under challenging conditions.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 17, 2025·7 min read

How the Brain Selects Between Perception and Memory

The brain constantly toggles between focusing on external sensory information and internal mental representations like memories, plans, and thoughts. This seamless switching is crucial for adaptive behavior, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·July 17, 2025·6 min read

Judging Music: Do We Trust Our Eyes More Than Our Ears?

A new study reveals that the “sight-over-sound” effect—where visual cues outweigh audio in judging music—depends heavily on the listener’s musical background. In experiments with Japanese brass band performances, general musicians relied more on visuals, while brass band specialists judged more accurately by sound alone.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·July 17, 2025·8 min read

Overactive Anterior Insula May Fuel Anxiety and Depression

New research shows that elevated glutamate-glutamine (Glx) levels in the anterior insular cortex (AIC) make people more sensitive to mistakes and more prone to anxiety and depression. Using functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy and reinforcement learning tasks, scientists found that high AIC Glx predicted both a general internalizing symptom score and heightened error sensitivity, which mediated this relationship.

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