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cognition

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A representation of a human head examining its experiences.
The Joy of Why

What Is the Nature of Consciousness?

By Steven Strogatz
May 31, 2023
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Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as the neuroscientist Anil Seth explains to Steven Strogatz, research is making progress in understanding this elusive phenomenon.

A person stares at a thought bubble.
cognition

Is It Real or Imagined? How Your Brain Tells the Difference.

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
May 24, 2023
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New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by checking whether they cross a “reality threshold.”

Human figures in fetal positions float through a dim, twilit space.
neuroscience

How Loneliness Reshapes the Brain

By Marta Zaraska
February 28, 2023
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Feelings of loneliness prompt changes in the brain that further isolate people from social contact.

The face of a sleeping person surrounded by images of the person running and flying in dreams, with other images of scientists monitoring the process.
The Joy of Why

Why and How Do We Dream?

By Steven Strogatz
August 24, 2022
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Dreams are subjective, but there are ways to peer into the minds of people while they are dreaming. Steven Strogatz speaks with sleep researcher Antonio Zadra about how new experimental methods have changed our understanding of dreams.

a metallic face processes a butterfly on a robotic hand
artificial intelligence

Self-Taught AI Shows Similarities to How the Brain Works

By Anil Ananthaswamy
August 11, 2022
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Self-supervised learning allows a neural network to figure out for itself what matters. The process might be what makes our own brains so successful.

A man in a blue suit walking down the stairs outdoors.
Q&A

The Computer Scientist Challenging AI to Learn Better

By Allison Whitten
August 2, 2022
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Christopher Kanan is building algorithms that can continuously learn over time — the way we do.

A blue virtual being, made of neural networks, plays with colorful blocks inside a glowing sphere
machine learning

By Exploring Virtual Worlds, AI Learns in New Ways

By Allison Whitten
June 24, 2022
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Intelligent beings learn by interacting with the world. Artificial intelligence researchers have adopted a similar strategy to teach their virtual agents new tricks.

2021 in Review

The Year in Biology

By John Rennie
December 21, 2021
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The detailed understanding of brains and multicellular bodies reached new heights this year, while the genomes of the COVID-19 virus and various organisms yielded more surprises.

Illustration of tangled branches that can also look like the folds in a brain.
neuroscience

To Be Energy-Efficient, Brains Predict Their Perceptions

By Anil Ananthaswamy
November 15, 2021
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Results from neural networks support the idea that brains are “prediction machines” — and that they work that way to conserve energy.


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