cognitive-neuroscience

The hippocampus plays a central role in converting short-term into long-term memory and is particularly vulnerable to inflammatory injury. Cognitive impairment is a recognized sequela of bacterial meningitis. Isolated loss of memory formation due to bilateral hippocampal destruction is rare.

IntroductionMalodors in the human body can diminish comfort in living and working environments, potentially increasing stress and dissatisfaction levels. Therefore, there is a growing need to objectively characterize the properties of human body malodor. The brain extracts various types of information from odor stimuli. Although the central processing pathways of the human olfactory system are no…

A Mississippi State University faculty member and undergraduate researcher are using eye-tracking technology at MSU-Meridian to study how students see, process and respond in high-pressure training scenarios, helping reshape how future healthcare professionals are educated.

A week ago, I wrote about how Generative and Agentic AI may be amplifying what I’ve been calling cognitive debt: the accumulated gap between a system’s evolving structure and a team’s shared understanding of how and why that system works and can be changed over time. The post sparked thoughtful discussion across different communities. Rather than respond thread by thread, I want to synthesize wha…

Traumatic experiences can cause memory problems, and estrogen may be a key factor that shapes the brain's resilience against such stressors, a mouse study finds.

Vehicles, the carriers of representational content, are an important, if somewhat undertheorized, posit in cognitive science. In this paper we argue that generating and maintaining representational vehicles is not a trivial problem, even more clearly so when we are dealing with cognition in complex systems such as brains, or brain-body-environment aggregates. We discuss various vehicle-building o…

Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered something that experienced ballroom dancers have long known: When dancers are in tune with each other, their brains may sync up, helping them move as one.

It is normal to believe that strong feelings of certainty mean that we possess the truth. Neuroscience explains why we should be cautious about strong feelings of certainty.

Being overweight may lead to accelerated cognitive decline, according to new research from the University of Georgia.

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A clinical trial suggests that exercise, and possibly low-dose ibuprofen, may help counter cognitive decline during chemotherapy. Cognitive changes are a surprisingly common side effect of chemotherapy, affecting up to 80% of patients. Often described as “brain fog,” these symptoms can include trouble concentrating, memory slips, and difficulty juggling everyday tasks. While usually mild, they [.…

Omega-3 supplements are widely regarded as a simple way to support brain health, especially with age. For millions of adults, omega-3 supplements are part of a daily routine built around heart, joint, eye, and brain health. Fish oil, krill oil, and flaxseed oil capsules are among the most widely used nonvitamin supplements in the United [...]

In mouse brains, star-shaped astrocytes form flexible networks that may offer another way for brain regions to communicate.

Post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) has garnered widespread attention due to its high incidence and its association with increased risk of stroke recurrence and mortality. Growing evidence indicates that early prediction of PSCI and the implementation of effective interventions can help delay disease progression and improve long-term patient outcomes. With advances in imaging technology, the …

Nature Communications, Published online: 04 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-71506-9 UFLARE is a fMRI method that dissociates bottom-up from top-down signals by tracking ultrafast information flow across cortical layers. Validated across brain systems and injury models, it enables studying brain communication, learning, and disease.

Just like vertebrates, cephalopods—such as octopuses and squid—have elaborate brains. Neuroscientists are flocking to them for insights into how intelligence evolved.

The brain’s memory center may begin life more like a crowded web than an empty canvas. Researchers discovered that early neural networks in the hippocampus are dense and seemingly random, then become more organized by shedding connections over time. This pruning process creates a faster, more efficient system for linking experiences and forming memories. It challenges the idea that the brain star…

This paper explores how meditation serves as a tool to modulate and reconfigure the cognitive boundary between the subjective self and objective reality. By integrating Cognitive Constructivism (CC)—which views the mind as a "prediction machine" that constructs experienced reality—with Existential Realism (ER)—which emphasizes the primacy of the immediate "now"—the study examines the deconstructi…

In 1950, Alan Turing proposed replacing the question "Can machines think?" with a behavioral test: if a machine's outputs are indistinguishable from those of a thinking being, the question of whether it truly thinks can be set aside. This paper argues that Turing's move was not only a pragmatic simplification but also an epistemological commitment, a decision about what kind of evidence counts as…