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perception

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artificial intelligence

AI Researchers Fight Noise by Turning to Biology

By Allison Whitten
December 7, 2021
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Tiny amounts of artificial noise can fool neural networks, but not humans. Some researchers are looking to neuroscience for a fix.

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.

An illustration that shows words and music from an opera singer going into a listener’s brain.
neuroscience

The Brain Processes Speech in Parallel With Other Sounds

By Jordana Cepelewicz
October 21, 2021
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Scientists thought that the brain’s hearing centers might just process speech along with other sounds. But new work suggests that speech gets some special treatment very early on.

Nobel Prize

Medicine Nobel Prize Goes to Temperature and Touch Discoveries

By Jordana Cepelewicz
October 4, 2021
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David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of how we detect heat and touch.

An artist’s conception of the ways that functional capacities have been mapped to regions of the brain.
neuroscience

The Brain Doesn’t Think the Way You Think It Does

By Jordana Cepelewicz
August 24, 2021
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Familiar categories of mental functions such as perception, memory and attention reflect our experience of ourselves, but they are misleading about how the brain works. More revealing approaches are emerging.

neuroscience

Secret Workings of Smell Receptors Revealed for First Time

By Jordana Cepelewicz
June 21, 2021
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Researchers have finally seen how some smell receptors bind to odor molecules. The work yields new insights into one of the most mysterious and versatile senses.

A drawing of a mouse, with lines representing sensory data rotating 90 degrees to become lines of memory data.
neuroscience

The Brain ‘Rotates’ Memories to Save Them From New Sensations

By Jordana Cepelewicz
April 15, 2021
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Some populations of neurons simultaneously process sensations and memories. New work shows how the brain rotates those representations to prevent interference.

Yarn models of a deep learning network and a brain.
neuroscience

Deep Neural Networks Help to Explain Living Brains

By Anil Ananthaswamy
October 28, 2020
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Deep neural networks, often criticized as “black boxes,” are helping neuroscientists understand the organization of living brains.

Simple line drawing of a beating human heart.
Abstractions blog

How Your Heart Influences What You Perceive and Fear

By Jordana Cepelewicz
July 6, 2020
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The heartbeat and other bodily processes play a surprising role in shaping perception and cognition.


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