Perception News

January 24, 2025

Top Headlines

VR Subway Experiment Highlights Role of Sound in Disrupting Balance for People With Inner Ear Disorder

Jan. 24, 2025 — The vestibular system is a network of organs in the inner ears that detects the motions and position of the head. The brain uses this information, along with inputs from the eyes and joints, to ...

Hot or Cold? How the Brain Deciphers Thermal Sensations

Jan. 22, 2025 — Thermal sensations are consciously differentiated as hot or cold by the brain; however, the neural mechanism that enables this differentiation is not well understood. To address this, researchers have used electroencephalography to record brain ...

Automatic Speech Recognition on Par With Humans in Noisy Conditions

Jan. 14, 2025 — Are humans or machines better at recognizing speech? A new study shows that in noisy conditions, current automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems achieve remarkable accuracy and sometimes even surpass human performance. However, the systems need ...

Study Shows Effectiveness of Method to Stem Nearsightedness

Jan. 16, 2025 — A new report shows the benefit of wearing contact lenses for slowing myopia has a lasting effect -- good news since 50% of the world (5 billion people) will likely be nearsighted by ...

Latest Headlines

updated 6:02pm EST

Fine-Tuned Brain-Computer Interface Makes Prosthetic Limbs Feel More Real

Jan. 16, 2025 — Two new articles document progress in neuroprosthetic technology that lets people feel the shape and movement of objects moving over the 'skin' of a bionic ...

Hearing Impairment May Be a Sign of Increased Risk of Parkinson's Disease

Jan. 14, 2025 — There may be a link between hearing impairment and an increased risk of developing Parkinson's according to new research. This is one of the first studies to examine whether sensory impairments, such ...

Words Activate Hidden Brain Processes Shaping Emotions, Decisions, and Behavior

Jan. 8, 2025 — In a study, scientists have shown neurotransmitters in the human brain are active during the processing of the emotional content of language, ...

How Electrical Synapses Fine-Tune Sensory Information for Better Decisions

Jan. 8, 2025 — Scientists have taken a major step in understanding how animal brains make decisions, revealing a crucial role for electrical synapses in 'filtering' sensory information. The new research ...

Mixed Signals: How the Brain Interprets Social Cues

Jan. 6, 2025 — Researchers have found that smell and sound signals merge in the mouse brain's hearing center, influencing social behaviors like pup retrieval. The discovery may lead to a better understanding of how ...

Study Reveals That Sleep Prevents Unwanted Memories from Intruding

Jan. 2, 2025 — The link between poor sleep and mental health problems could be related to deficits in brain regions that keep unwanted thoughts out of ...

Newborn Brain Circuit Stabilizes Gaze

Jan. 2, 2025 — An ancient brain circuit, which enables the eyes to reflexively rotate up as the body tilts down, tunes itself early in life as an animal develops, a new study ...

Getting Rehab Earlier Improves Concussion Outcomes

Dec. 19, 2024 — People who suffer from continued symptoms of concussion should seek a referral to physical therapy as soon as possible, new research ...

Effect of Somatosensory Electrical Stimulation on Hand Choice

Dec. 19, 2024 — Hand choice, an unconscious decision, is influenced by target-related information, but if these are non-informative, the choice will be approximately 50-50. In this equilibrium situation, non-target ...

Research Shows How Music Can Reduce Distress

Dec. 19, 2024 — A new study has demonstrated for the first time how and why music can reduce distress and agitation for people with advanced dementia. The study involved interviews with staff and music therapists on ...

Human-Like Artificial Intelligence May Face Greater Blame for Moral Violations

Dec. 18, 2024 — In a new study, participants tended to assign greater blame to artificial intelligences (AIs) involved in real-world moral transgressions when they perceived the AIs as having more human-like ...

Dyslexia Genetics Linked to Brain Structure

Dec. 18, 2024 — Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty in which genes often play a role. How do genes associated with dyslexia relate to brain structure in the general population? In a large-scale study, a team of ...

Paranoia May Be, in Part, a Visual Problem

Dec. 17, 2024 — Could complex beliefs like paranoia have roots in something as basic as vision? A new study finds evidence that they might. When completing a visual perception task, in which participants had to ...

Heart Rate Activity Influences When Infants Speak

Dec. 17, 2024 — A psychologist found that a baby's first sweet sounds and early attempts at forming words are directly linked to the baby's heart ...

The Psychological Implications of Big Brother's Gaze

Dec. 16, 2024 — A new psychological study has shown that when people know they are under surveillance it generates an automatic response of heightened awareness of being watched, with implications for public mental ...

Breaking Barriers: Study Uses AI to Interpret American Sign Language in Real-Time

Dec. 16, 2024 — A study is the first-of-its-kind to recognize American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet gestures using computer vision. Researchers developed a custom dataset of 29,820 static images of ASL hand ...

Online Training Could Help Older Adults Communicate in Noisy Environments

Dec. 9, 2024 — Online training that helps people recognize and understand new voices could be key to helping older adults improve communication in everyday environments, finds new ...

Scientists Create AI That 'Watches' Videos by Mimicking the Brain

Dec. 9, 2024 — Imagine an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can watch and understand moving images with the subtlety of a human brain. Now, scientists have made this a reality by creating MovieNet: an ...

Study Breaks the Silence on How Fish and Lizards Regenerate Hearing

Dec. 9, 2024 — A new study has identified key gene regulators that enable some deafened animals -- including fish and lizards -- to naturally regenerate their hearing. The findings could guide future efforts to ...

Brain Mapping Advances Understanding of Human Speech and Hallucinations in Schizophrenia

Dec. 3, 2024 — Voice experiments in people with epilepsy have helped trace the circuit of electrical signals in the brain that allow its hearing center to sort out background sounds from their own ...

DNA Damage Is Key Factor in Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Dec. 3, 2024 — A research team has discovered that accumulated DNA damage in the retina is a key contributor to age-related macular degeneration and that targeting specific retinal cell types may lead to treatments ...

Scientists Discover Shared Genetic Foundations Between Musical Rhythm and Human Language

Nov. 27, 2024 — A study has revealed that genetic variants associated with higher likelihood of rhythm impairments tended to be also associated with higher likelihood of dyslexia. The reverse was also the case: ...

Great Apes Visually Track Subject-Object Relationships Like Humans Do, Study Finds

Nov. 26, 2024 — Great apes track events with their eyes in the same way that humans do, according to a new ...

Nerve Cells of Blind Mice Retain Their Visual Function

Nov. 26, 2024 — Using microelectrodes, scientists could show that cells in the retina play different roles. The produce different signals, which is important for the processing of visual information. These ...

Potential New Biomarker for Psychosis Diagnosis

Nov. 25, 2024 — The current standard of care for psychosis is a diagnostic interview, but what if it could be diagnosed before the first symptom emerged? Researchers are pointing toward a potential biomarker in the ...

New Insights Into Sleep Uncover Key Mechanisms Related to Cognitive Function

Nov. 22, 2024 — While it's well known that sleep enhances cognitive performance, the underlying neural mechanisms, particularly those related to nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, remain largely unexplored. A ...

Animal Characters Can Boost Young Children's Psychological Development

Nov. 22, 2024 — A study has shown that iconic characters such as Peter Rabbit -- or Toad and Ratty from The Wind in the Willows -- can also play an important role in the development of children's theory of mind ...

New Model of Neuronal Circuit Provides Insight on Eye Movement

Nov. 22, 2024 — Working with week-old zebrafish larva, researchers decoded how the connections formed by a network of neurons in the brainstem guide the fishes' gaze. The study found that a simplified ...

Hear This! Transforming Health Care With Speech-to-Text Technology

Nov. 21, 2024 — Researchers study the importance of enunciation when using speech-to-text software in medical ...

Researchers Use Artificial Intelligence to Diagnose Depression

Nov. 20, 2024 — Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses. As many as 280 million people worldwide are affected by this disease, which is why researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) ...