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perception

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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.

2022 in Review

The Year in Biology

By John Rennie
December 21, 2022
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Momentum for new ideas in Alzheimer’s research joined advances in neuroscience, developmental biology and origin-of-life studies to make 2022 a memorable year of biological insights.

Illustration in which a forest scene is mirrored in a person’s right eye while the left eye shows a clock.
neuroscience

How the Brain Distinguishes Memories From Perceptions

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
December 14, 2022
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The neural representations of a perceived image and the memory of it are almost the same. New work shows how and why they are different.

Artwork of human figure smelling a flower and the smell being categorized as a type of flower.
smell

Machine Learning Highlights a Hidden Order in Scents

By Allison Parshall
October 10, 2022
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Efforts to build a better digital “nose” suggest that our perception of scents reflects both the structure of aromatic molecules and the metabolic processes that make them.

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 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.

A human figure’s brain with a “low battery” icon on it.
neuroscience

The Brain Has a ‘Low-Power Mode’ That Blunts Our Senses

By Allison Whitten
June 14, 2022
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Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details.

neuroscience

New Map of Meaning in the Brain Changes Ideas About Memory

By Jordana Cepelewicz
February 8, 2022
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Researchers have mapped hundreds of semantic categories to the tiny bits of the cortex that represent them in our thoughts and perceptions. What they discovered might change our view of memory.

Illustration of a person remembering the orientation of an arrow, but also a range of other orientations it might have had.
neuroscience

Neural Noise Shows the Uncertainty of Our Memories

By Veronique Greenwood
January 18, 2022
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The electrical chatter of our working memories reflects our uncertainty about their contents.


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