Perception News

April 8, 2025

Top Headlines

Perceiving One's Own Body: Babies Sense Their Heartbeat and Breathing

Apr. 7, 2025 — Body signals such as heartbeat and breathing accompany us constantly, often unnoticed as background noise of our perception. Even in the earliest years of life, these signals are important as they contribute to the development of self-awareness and ...

Common Phrases, Not Fancy Words, Make You Sound More Fluent in a Foreign Language

Apr. 3, 2025 — Fluency in a foreign language is often thought to be about speaking quickly and using advanced vocabulary. However, researchers reveal that speakers who use common, everyday expressions sound more ...

Mouse Study Identifies Shared Genes Involved in Hearing and Vision Regeneration

Mar. 31, 2025 — The same genes could hold the key to regenerating cells in the ear and eye, according to a new mouse study. Researchers focused on a group of interacting genes called the Hippo pathway, which serve ...

Retinal Therapy May Restore Lost Vision

Apr. 2, 2025 — Researchers have successfully developed a novel drug to restore vision. The treatment method restores vision through retinal nerve ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:30pm EDT

Genes May Influence Our Enjoyment of Music

Mar. 28, 2025 — Does our ability to enjoy music have a biological basis? A genetic twin study shows that music enjoyment is partly heritable. Scientists uncovered genetic factors that influence the degree of music ...

How the Brain Evaluates Rewards

Apr. 2, 2025 — Researchers have gained a new understanding of how the brain processes reward and risk information. Neuroscientists show how nerve cells in the so-called amygdala not only encode the probability and ...

Feeling the Future: New Wearable Tech Simulates Realistic Touch

Mar. 27, 2025 — Most haptic devices only deliver feedback as simple vibrations. New device applies dynamic forces in any direction to simulate a more realistic sense of touch. Small, lightweight device can enhance ...

How Movement Affects the Way the Brain Processes Sound and Sight

Mar. 26, 2025 — A research team has uncovered a fundamental principle of how the brain prioritizes vision and hearing differently depending on whether we are still or in motion. The study provides new insights into ...

At-Home Smell Test for Early Detection of Alzheimer's Disease

Mar. 24, 2025 — Researchers developed olfactory tests -- in which participants sniff odor labels that have been placed on a card -- to assess people's ability to discriminate, identify and remember odors. They found ...

VR Study Reveals How Pain and Fear Weaken Sense of Body Ownership

Mar. 21, 2025 — A study found that when people were told to imagine their virtual bodies in pain, their brains resisted the illusion of ownership. Their findings could provide insights into why some people may ...

Brain Imaging Reveals Surprises About Learning

Mar. 19, 2025 — By revealing for the first time what happens in the brain when an animal makes a mistake, researchers are shedding light on the holy grail of neuroscience: the mechanics of how we learn. The team ...

Bridging Nature and Nurture: Study Reveals Brain's Flexible Foundation from Birth

Mar. 17, 2025 — By studying never-before-seen details of brain connectivity in human infants, researchers have identified how a balance of innate structure and ...

A Rubber Hand Alleviates Pain

Mar. 18, 2025 — If a person hides their own hand and focuses on a rubber hand instead, they may perceive it as part of their own body under certain conditions. What sounds like a gimmick could one day be used to ...

Thinking Outside the Box: Uncovering a Novel Approach to Brainwave Monitoring

Mar. 13, 2025 — Researchers have found a new way to more precisely detect and monitor brain cell activity during deep brain stimulation, a common treatment for ...

Do You See What I See?

Mar. 12, 2025 — As a child, did it ever occur to you that your perception of color differed from that of others? It's quite common to have this thought, but it turns out that the human color experience may be ...

Butterflies Choose Mates Because They Are More Attractive, Not Just Easier to See

Mar. 11, 2025 — A simple neural change alters mating preferences in male butterflies, aiding rapid behavioral evolution, researchers ...

Decoding the Neural Basis of Affective Empathy: How the Brain Feels Others' Pain

Mar. 10, 2025 — A research team has uncovered key insights into how the brain processes others' distress. Using miniature endoscopic calcium imaging, the researchers identified specific neural ensembles in the ...

Humans Have a Long Way to Go in Understanding a Dog's Emotions

Mar. 10, 2025 — New research has revealed that people often do not perceive the true meaning of their pet's emotions and can misread their dog. The reasons for this are many and include a human misunderstanding ...

New Study Examines How Physics Students Perceive Recognition

Mar. 5, 2025 — Experts see peer recognition as important to student success in physics, and a new study gives college-level physics instructors insight into how students perceive the message from their classmates ...

How the Brain Distinguishes Between Pain and Itch

Mar. 4, 2025 — A research team has uncovered the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of pain and itch in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This study provides new insights into how the brain ...

It's Not Just What You Say -- It's Also How You Say It

Mar. 3, 2025 — First study to reveal the brain encodes pitch accents separately from the sounds that make up words. Heschl's gyrus region of the brain, an earlier stage of auditory processing, plays a much ...

Evidence Expanding That 40Hz Gamma Stimulation Promotes Brain Health

Mar. 3, 2025 — A decade of studies from labs around the world provide a growing evidence base that increasing the power of the brain's gamma rhythms could help fight Alzheimer's, and perhaps other, ...

Neurons Gather Together for Vision

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

Unraveling the Brain's Hidden Motor Modules

Feb. 26, 2025 — Scientists have identified previously unknown neural modules in the brain that control movement and adapt during skill learning. Their findings challenge long-held ideas about how the brain organizes ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

'I Can't Hear You, I'm Too Stressed': Repeated Stress in Mice Reduces Sound Perception

Feb. 11, 2025 — After a week of stress, mice show changes in how their brains process sound, reducing how well they perceive loud noises, according to a new ...