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Category: neuroscience – Page 6

Thanks to their excellent smelling ability, dogs have been used for hundreds of years to hunt down wild game and search for criminals. At airports, they help identify explosives and illicit drugs. In disaster situations, they can rescue survivors and find human remains.

But each dog can only be trained to detect one class of odor compounds, which limits the range of smells it’s able to detect. Training costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes several months. For Florida startup Canaery, the solution is merging canines with neurotechnology to allow them to detect everything from bombs and other contraband to human diseases and environmental toxins—no specialized training needed.

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The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (OECS) is a free, online collection of multidisciplinary peer-reviewed articles on various topics in cognitive science. Officially launched last August by MIT Press, the OECS is a successor to the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. It currently has around 80 articles, with more to come, on topics such as: Social Epistemology by Mandi Astola and Mark Alfano The Mind-Body Problem by Tim Crane Bodily Sensations by Frédérique de Vignemont Personal/Subpersonal Distinction by Zoe Drayson Conceptual Analysis by Frank Jackson Natural Kinds by Muhammad Ali Khalidi Cognitive Ontology by Colin Klein Free Will by Neil Levy Experimental Philosophy by Edouard Machery Metacognition by Joëlle Proust …to pick just ten. The editors of OECS are Michael C. Frank of Stanford University and Asifa Majid of the University of Oxford. You can check it out here.

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Divorce, the legal dissolution of marriage, can be driven by a variety of factors, ranging from changes in the economic status or health conditions of spouses to contrasting values. The end of a marriage can often be challenging to process. Thus, it can have adverse effects on the well-being and mental health of ex-spouses.

On average, the rates of worldwide have increased over the past century. Improved understanding of the primary factors that prompt people to dissolve a marriage could help to devise more effective couples and marriage counseling strategies, potentially contributing to a reduction in divorce rates.

Sari Mentser and Lilach Sagiv, two researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, recently carried out a study specifically exploring the relationship between people’s values and divorce. Their findings, published in Communications Psychology, suggest that interaction between spouses’ cultural and can predict divorce.

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A Korean research team has succeeded in securing a basic technology for further improving the completeness level of neuromorphic devices. Their paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science observed the fine structure of the magnon, which is attracting attention as a key material for neuromorphic devices. As areas that are approximately 1,000 times finer than before were observed successfully, it is expected that the results will enable the design of more sophisticated neuromorphic devices.

Neuromorphic devices are next-generation semiconductors designed to mimic the structure of the human brain. They process information by mimicking the way neurons generate signals and transmit them to other neurons through synapses.

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The first step in this process is determining where in the brain the BCI should record from to decode someone’s intended speech.

Currently, BCI devices are only used on individuals with paralysis from ALS or stroke in the brainstem, which leaves them unable to move or communicate. In these patients, BCIs record signals from the frontal lobe. But Broca’s aphasia, which most often affects people after a stroke or brain tumor, results from damage to the frontal lobe of the brain, where speech production and parts of language are processed. So, to help patients with Broca’s aphasia, scientists would likely need to record signals from other areas of the brain.

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Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have enrolled the first participants in an international clinical trial designed to prevent Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that primarily affects older adults, leading to memory loss, cognitive decline, and behavioral changes. It is the most common cause of dementia. The disease is characterized by the buildup of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain, which disrupt cell function and communication. There is currently no cure, and treatments focus on managing symptoms and improving quality of life.

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A new study suggests that creativity maps onto a common brain circuit and that injury and neurological disease have the potential to unleash creativity. Researchers analyzed 857 participants across 36 fMRI brain imaging studies to identify a common brain circuit for creativity.

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Two studies published in the latest issue of Science have revealed that birds, reptiles, and mammals have developed complex brain circuits independently, despite sharing a common ancestor. These findings challenge the traditional view of brain evolution and demonstrate that, while comparable brain functions exist among these groups, embryonic formation mechanisms and cell types have followed divergent evolutionary trajectories.

The pallium is the region where the neocortex forms in mammals, the part responsible for cognitive and complex functions that most distinguishes humans from other species. The pallium has traditionally been considered a comparable structure among mammals, birds, and reptiles, varying only in complexity levels. It was assumed that this region housed similar neuronal types, with equivalent circuits for sensory and cognitive processing.

Previous studies had identified the presence of shared excitatory and , as well as general connectivity patterns suggesting a similar evolutionary path in these vertebrate species.

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A study led by Prof. Li Hai from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed that the balance between habitual and goal-directed decision-making strategies is influenced by the availability of working memory resources.

The findings, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, provide a new framework for understanding how sequential decisions are made.

Everyday decisions often involve a series of choices aimed at reaching a goal-whether selecting a restaurant or deciding on the route. People vary in how they make decisions: some rely on habits, while others adjust based on new information and changing goals.

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