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Artificial Intelligence

This shows a brain made of computer chips.

·May 19, 2025·7 min read

Rewiring Memory: A New Model That Learns Like a Human Brain

A new memory model called Input-Driven Plasticity (IDP) offers a more human-like explanation for how external stimuli help us retrieve memories, building on the foundations of the classic Hopfield network. Unlike traditional models, which assume memory recall happens from a fixed starting point, the IDP framework describes how stimuli reshape the brain’s “energy landscape” in real time to guide memory retrieval.

This shows a person reading and a brain.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·May 19, 2025·5 min read

Reading Fiction Boosts Empathy and Fights Loneliness

While AI companions are marketed as a fix for loneliness, research shows that reading offers far more meaningful benefits. Reading fiction can foster social connection, reduce stress, enhance empathy, and even reshape brain activity linked to social cognition.

Featured Neuroscience

·May 17, 2025·5 min read

AI Chatbots Mirror a Human Brain Disorder

Researchers have found a surprising similarity between the way large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT process information and how the brains of people with Wernicke’s aphasia function. In both cases, fluent but often incoherent output is produced, suggesting rigid internal processing patterns that can distort meaning.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·May 15, 2025·5 min read

AI’s Spontaneously Develop Social Norms Like Humans

Large language model (LLM) AI agents, when interacting in groups, can form shared social conventions without centralized coordination. Researchers adapted a classic “naming game” framework to test whether populations of AI agents could develop consensus through repeated, limited interactions.

Featured Neuroscience

·May 15, 2025·6 min read

AI Handwriting Analysis May Catch Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Early

A new AI-driven tool developed by researchers could revolutionize how educators and clinicians screen for dyslexia and dysgraphia in children. By analyzing handwriting samples from K–5 students, the system detects behavioral cues, spelling errors, motor difficulties, and cognitive issues with remarkable precision.

Featured Neuroethics Neuroscience

·May 14, 2025·4 min read

Does AI Have Free Will? New Study Says We’re Getting Close

A new study argues that some generative AI agents meet all three philosophical criteria for free will: agency, choice, and control. Drawing from theories by Dennett and List, researchers examined AI agents like Minecraft’s Voyager and fictional autonomous drones, concluding that they exhibit functional free will.

Featured Neuroscience

·May 13, 2025·5 min read

Soft Robots Learn to Grasp with Human-Like Flexibility

A new study reveals how a soft, compliant robotic hand—built with silicone skin, springs, and bendable joints, can self-organize grasps without needing precise environmental data or complex programming. The ADAPT hand succeeded in grasping 24 different objects with a 93% success rate using only four programmed motions, adapting naturally through mechanical flexibility.

Featured Neuroscience

·May 13, 2025·5 min read

AI LLMs Learn Like Us, But Without Abstract Thought

Summary: A new study finds that large language models (LLMs), like GPT-J, generate words not by applying fixed grammatical rules,...

Featured Neuroscience

·May 10, 2025·7 min read

AI Learns to Decode Neuron Types From Brain Signals With 95% Accuracy

Scientists have developed an AI algorithm that can identify different types of neurons from brain activity recordings with 95% accuracy—without needing genetic tools. By tagging neurons with light-sensitive markers and recording their unique electrical signatures, researchers created a training library that allowed the AI to distinguish neuron types in both mice and monkeys.

This shows a woman's face with a digital overlay.

Brain Cancer Featured Neuroscience

·May 10, 2025·7 min read

AI Tool Reads Faces to Predict Health, Aging, and Cancer Outcomes

Researchers have developed an AI tool called FaceAge that uses facial photos to estimate biological age and predict survival outcomes in cancer patients. In a study involving over 6,000 patients, those with cancer had FaceAges about five years older than their chronological age, and higher FaceAges were linked to poorer survival.

This shows people using AI to design a robot.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·May 9, 2025·7 min read

Seeing Is Believing: How We Judge AI as Creative or Not

New research shows that people perceive AI systems as more creative when they observe not just the final product, but also the creative process and the robot in action. In a set of controlled experiments using identical drawings, participants consistently rated creativity higher the more they saw of the act itself.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience Pain

·May 7, 2025·5 min read

Gut Microbiome Reveals Chronic Pain Risk, AI Study Finds

New research shows that AI can identify complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) with over 90% accuracy by analyzing gut microbiome patterns. Despite differences in geography and diet, a shared "microbiome signature" was detected across patients from Israel and Canada.