Perception News

March 2, 2025

Top Headlines

Feb. 27, 2025 — As in larger brains, mouse visual cortex neurons with the same function cluster in ...

A New Model Accurately Predicts the Movement of Elite Athletes to Catch the Ball in Parabolic Flight

Feb. 25, 2025 — How does a tennis player like Carlos Alcaraz decide where to run to return Novak Djokovic's ball by just looking at the ball's initial position? These behaviours, so common in elite athletes, are ...

The Brain Perceives Unexpected Pain More Strongly

Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers used visual threat manipulation in the virtual reality environment and thermal stimulation to investigate how the brain perceives pain. They found that the brain perceives pain more strongly when the perceived pain is out of alignment ...

Brain-Wide Activity Change Visualized as Geometric Patterns

Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers have applied a visualization technique to depict the brain's activity related to visual perception as geometric patterns. They visualized different shapes as the ever-changing neuronal activity in the temporal and frontal lobes of the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:01pm EST

Breathing and Vision May Be Linked

Feb. 21, 2025 — Researchers have discovered a fundamental mechanism that affects the size of the pupil, namely our breathing. The study shows that the pupil is smallest during inhalation and largest during ...

Framework to Identify Food Selectivity Origins in the Brain

Feb. 20, 2025 — Human evolution has revolved around food, from identifying and foraging for it to growing and preparing it. Researchers have identified a region in the brain's visual cortex that responds to food and ...

Scientists Solve the Brain's Motion-Source Separation Problem

Feb. 19, 2025 — Neuroscientists have discovered how the brain distinguishes between visual motion occurring in the external world from that caused by the observer moving through it. Known as the 'motion-source ...

New Study Uncovers How Genes Influence Retinal Aging and Brain Health

Feb. 18, 2025 — Researchers used mice with nine different genetic backgrounds to identify factors influencing eye aging, paving the way for eye-based diagnostics for neurodegenerative ...

A Single Protein May Have Helped Shape the Emergence of Spoken Language

Feb. 18, 2025 — How much does the evolution of human speech owe to one amino ...

Study Maps New Brain Regions Behind Intended Speech

Feb. 13, 2025 — Imagine seeing a furry, four-legged animal that meows. Mentally, you know what it is, but the word 'cat' is stuck on the tip of your tongue. This phenomenon, known as Broca's aphasia or expressive ...

High-Tech Video Optimization in Our Brain

Feb. 10, 2025 — Why do our mental images stay sharp even when we are moving fast? A team of neuroscientists has identified a mechanism that corrects visual distortions caused by movement in animals. The study, ...

How Does the Brain Differentiate New Stimuli from Old Ones?

Feb. 10, 2025 — A study sheds light on how networks in the brain detect new information, offering insight into disorders like ...

Scientists Discover Brain Mechanism That Helps Us Overcome Fear

Feb. 6, 2025 — Researchers have unveiled the precise brain mechanisms that enable animals to overcome instinctive fears. The study in mice could have implications for developing therapeutics for fear-related ...

Air Pollution Clouds the Mind and Makes Everyday Tasks Challenging

Feb. 6, 2025 — People's ability to interpret emotions or focus on performing a task is reduced by short-term exposure to particulate matter (PM) air pollution, potentially making everyday activities, such as the ...

Positive Emotions Plus Deep Sleep Equals Longer-Lasting Perceptual Memories

Feb. 3, 2025 — Researchers have uncovered how perceptual memories linked to positive emotions, such as joy or happiness, are strengthened during sleep. The study could help scientists understand the neurological ...

How the Brain Enables Flexible Decisions

Feb. 3, 2025 — Our brain is remarkably flexible in producing different reactions to supposedly comparable situations. The same sensory information can lead to different decisions depending on the behavioral ...

Sound Is a Primary Issue in the Lives of Skateboarders, Study Shows

Jan. 31, 2025 — Sound plays a significant and often poignant part of skateboarders' relationship with their sport, a new study ...

A Hearing Aid for ... Your Nose?

Jan. 30, 2025 — Scientists have discovered a feedback loop in the brain's odor center that seems to put smells and sounds into context. The feedback loop may help animals adjust their behaviors in response to ...

Scientists 'Mimic Real Biological Processes' Using Synthetic Neurons

Jan. 29, 2025 — A new collaboration has unlocked new potential for the field by creating a novel high-performance organic electrochemical neuron that responds within the frequency range of human ...

People With Schizophrenia Have an Altered Ability to Visually Perceive Contrast

Jan. 28, 2025 — Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder that affects around 1% of the world's population. Researchers have identified a deficit in contrast perception in people with schizophrenia. According ...

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Researchers Uncover New Complexities in Human Hearing

Jan. 27, 2025 — Physicists have discovered a sophisticated, previously unknown set of 'modes' within the human ear that put important constraints on how the ear amplifies faint sounds, tolerates noisy ...

Patients With Anorexia Have Elevated Opioid Neurotransmitter Activity in the Brain

Jan. 27, 2025 — A study showed that changes in the functioning of opioid neurotransmitters in the brain may underlie ...

New Drug Shows Promise in Restoring Vision for People With Nerve Damage

Jan. 24, 2025 — Researchers have found a promising drug candidate that could help restore vision in individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurological conditions that damage ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, providing new understanding into how people interpret the ...

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 ...

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 ...