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Category: neuroscience – Page 46

Problematic social media use is associated with believing in and engaging with fake news

Social media use is ubiquitous in our modern society, and some individuals display excessive, maladaptive use of these online platforms. This problematic social media use (PSMU) has been associated with greater impulsivity and risk-taking. Importantly, studies in healthy individuals have demonstrated that greater cognitive impulsivity is associated with a greater susceptibility to online “fake news.” Therefore, we hypothesized that PSMU would be associated with believing in and engaging with fake news. To address this, we conducted an online, within-subject experiment in which participants (N=189; female=102, male=86, prefer not to disclose=1; mean age=19.8 years) completed a fake news task. This task presented participants with 20 news stories (10 real and 10 false, in random order) formatted as social media posts. We assessed participants’ credibility judgments of these news posts, as well as participants’ intentions to click, like, comment, and share these posts. We also assessed participants’ degree of PSMU and then related this measure to their performance in our task. We conducted a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with a mixed model approach, and it revealed that the greater one’s PSMU, the more one finds specifically false news credible. We also found that the greater one’s PSMU, the greater one’s engagement with news posts, agnostic to the type of content (real or false). Finally, we found that the greater one’s PSMU, the greater one’s intent to click on specifically false news. Our research demonstrates that individuals who experience the most distress and impairment in daily functioning from social media use are also the most susceptible to false information posted on social media. We discuss the clinical implications of our findings.

Citation: Meshi D, Molina MD (2025) Problematic social media use is associated with believing in and engaging with fake news. PLoS ONE 20: e0321361. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.

Editor: Stefano Cresci„ National Research Council (CNR), ITALY

A new light on neural connections

Until now, only expensive and slow electron microscopes could reach this level of detail. But LICONN opens the door for more labs around the world to explore the brain’s cellular “wiring diagram” using tools they already have. It’s like giving everyone a high-powered zoom lens for decoding how the brain works, learns, and perhaps breaks down in disease.

In collaboration with the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), we published in Nature the first-ever method for using light microscopy to comprehensively map all the neurons and their connections in a block of brain tissue. The key finding from this validation experiment is that this approach works as well as electron microscopy-based connectomics.

Microscopy method can reconstruct mammalian brain tissue in synaptic detail

Our brain is a complex organ. Billions of nerve cells are wired in an intricate network, constantly processing signals, enabling us to recall memories or to move our bodies.

Making sense of this complicated network requires a precise look into how these are arranged and connected. “LICONN,” a new microscopy method developed by scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and Google Research, now helps piece together this puzzle.

Light microscopes have been evolving for centuries. Scientists use light microscopy to—literally and figuratively—illuminate the most intricate biological structures. However, unraveling the complex details and architecture of the brain remains a seemingly impossible challenge, considering its billions of densely packed neurons, each linked to other cells via thousands of synapses.

Mapping memory: Protein tracking technique reveals synaptic changes during learning

A team of Harvard researchers have unveiled a way to map the molecular underpinnings of how learning and memories are formed, a new technique expected to offer insights that may pave the way for new treatments for neurological disorders such as dementia.

“This technique provides a lens into the synaptic architecture of memory, something previously unattainable in such detail,” said Adam Cohen, professor of chemistry and and of physics and senior co-author of the research paper, published in Nature Neuroscience.

Memory resides within a dense network of billions of neurons within the brain. We rely on synaptic plasticity—the strengthening and modulation of connections between these neurons—to facilitate learning and memory.

The first nonverbal patient to receive Elon Musk’s Neuralink shares a video he edited and narrated using his brain chip

The first nonverbal Neuralink patient to receive the chip implant is offering a glimpse into how he uses the technology — editing and narrating a YouTube video using signals from his brain.

Brad Smith is the third person in the world to get a brain chip implant with Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and the first person with ALS to do so.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects motor neurons — the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord responsible for controlling voluntary muscle movement. Over time, patients lose voluntary control of muscle movements, affecting their ability to speak, eat, move, and breathe independently.

Qualia (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have, whether are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. are at the very heart of the mind-body problem.

The entry that follows is divided into ten sections. The first distinguishes various uses of the term The second addresses the question of which mental states have The third section brings out some of the main arguments for the view that are irreducible and non-physical. The remaining sections focus on functionalism and, the explanatory gap, and introspection, representational theories of, as intrinsic, nonrepresentational properties, relational theories of and finally the issue of and simple minds.

Scientists discover quantum computing in the brain

Kurian’s group believes these large tryptophan networks may have evolved to take advantage of their quantum properties. When cells breathe using oxygen—a process called aerobic respiration—they create free radicals, or reactive oxygen species (ROS). These unstable particles can emit high-energy UV photons, which damage DNA and other important molecules.

Tryptophan networks act as natural shields. They absorb this harmful light and re-emit it at lower energies, reducing damage. But thanks to superradiance, they may also perform this protective function much more quickly and efficiently than single molecules could.

A landmark experiment published in Nature puts leading theories of consciousness to the test

For centuries, the nature of consciousness has baffled scientists and philosophers alike. What transforms neural activity into the rich, subjective experience of seeing a face, hearing a melody, or feeling the warmth of the sun?

The Cogitate Consortium, a group of researchers from across the globe, including Professor Ole Jensen from Oxford University’s departments of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry, set out to change that. The consortium brought together the proponents of two influential theories of consciousness—Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT), led by Stanislas Dehaene, and Integrated Information Theory (IIT), proposed by Giulio Tononi—for a rigorous empirical test.

Their adversarial collaboration, a model of scientific inquiry famously advocated for by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman over 20 years ago, represents a fundamental shift in how science can be done. Rather than seeking to confirm pre-existing beliefs, the experiment was designed such that all predictions, methods, and interpretations were registered in advance, eliminating post-hoc rationalisations.

Childhood Adversity May Damage The Brain’s White Matter, Study Finds

Hardships in childhood could have lasting effects on the brain, new research shows, with adverse events such as family conflict and poverty potentially affecting cognitive function in kids for several years afterwards.

This study, led by a team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, looked specifically at white matter: the deeper tissue in the brain, made up of communication fibers ferrying information between neurons.

“We found that a range of adversities is associated with lower levels of fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of white matter microstructure, throughout the whole brain, and that this is associated with lower performance on mathematics and language tasks later on,” write the researchers in their published paper.