Perception

New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by checking whether they cross a “reality threshold.”

Memories may affect how well the brain will learn about future events by shifting our perceptions of the world.

After decades of frustration, researchers have determined how an airborne scent molecule links to a human smell receptor.

Feelings of loneliness prompt changes in the brain that further isolate people from social contact.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Intelligent beings learn by interacting with the world. Artificial intelligence researchers have adopted a similar strategy to teach their virtual agents new tricks.