cognitive-neuroscience

The brain is a black box of densely packed neurons, blood vessels and immune cells, all locked away in a sealed skull. Washington University in St. Louis’ Song Hu has dedicated his career to unlocking that puzzle box by developing new ways to “see” inside, and his team’s newest innovation could give researchers a new view of how brain cells and blood vessels work together and what happens when th…

Using this method showed “the largest improvement in memory” anyone has ever found, according to one expert.

When researchers at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus set out to create a map of all the neurons in the fruit fly brain in 2008, many in the scientific community thought they were out of their minds.

When researchers at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus set out to create a map of all the neurons in the fruit fly brain in 2008, many in the scientific community thought they were out of their minds.

It’s all in the head bob The post Even 10 Minutes of “Slow Running” Can Give Your Brain a Boost appeared first on Nautilus .

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02415-9 Frontal cortical tau pathology in aging humans is associated with reduced slow-wave travel during sleep. This reduced propagation is associated with poorer overnight memory retention, supporting a link between slow-wave travel and age-related memory function.

During sleep, exposure to short bursts of a staticky sound called “pink noise” can strengthen waves of cerebrospinal fluid, which clear debris from the brain, according to new research.

The debates over AI are endless, but scientists have found that large language models actually affect how we think, even after we stop using the tech.

Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41583-026-01078-6 Recent years have witnessed major advances in our understanding of the distinct functional and computational roles of the ventral hippocampus (vHPC). Mazen Kheirbek and colleagues examine the state-dependent representation of behaviourally salient information by the vHPC and discuss how its anatomy an…

Groove—the pleasurable urge to move in response to rhythmic music—is known to engage motor planning networks in the brain, and β band oscillations over motor cortex correlate with groove strength during passive listening. Whether this groove-related β modulation extends to active sensorimotor synchronization, and whether it tracks behavioral synchronization performance, remains an open question. …

_bioRxiv_. forthcomingMoral cognition is a complex process, which recruits a wide range of mechanisms. It is not clear whether any of them reliably reflects moral content in the stimulus. We set out to test whether a specific mechanism of moral content representation and/or detection exists, and where it is, if it exists. To that end we used uni- and multi-variate analyses, including inter-subjec…

Author's Note to Readers To make the formal mathematical and physical architecture of Resistance-Anchored Realism (RAT) intuitively accessible to an interdisciplinary audience—spanning epistemology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and foundational physics—I have translated the core derivations from my formal paper (Reconstructing Quantum Measurement and Spacetime Protocols from the "Acti…

Nature Communications, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77682-y Feeding can be regulated by sensory cues. This study identifies a multi-layer circuit that mediates food sight-promoted feeding and food-related memory in mice.

A new study by neuroscientists in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT shows how the brain encodes information throughout the decision-making process to keep options clearly in mind and to ensure that chosen and unchosen options are remembered.

Multitasking feels like a required skill in modern life, but as anyone who has tried keeping track of multiple chat windows, an email inbox, and a stream of phone notifications during a video call can tell you, figuring out which messages are important comes at a cost.

What are mirror neurons and how do they impact the way we move through our daily lives? Just like bodily movement, emotional states are also observable by the brain.

Short-term coffee aroma exposure was followed by reductions in several negative mood measures and an increase in an EEG-derived relaxation index in 20 healthy young adults. Heart rate and HRV did not change significantly, and the uncontrolled study cannot establish that coffee aroma caused the observed responses.