Human Quirks: Mind & Brain

May 1, 2025

Top Headlines

May 1, 2025 — Many people around the world believe in karma -- that idea that divine justice will punish people who do bad deeds and reward those who good. But that belief plays out differently for oneself versus others, according to new ...

Seasonal Changes Affect Alcohol Tolerance and Your Waistline

Apr. 30, 2025 — Researchers have found that drug effectiveness, alcohol tolerance, and carbohydrate metabolism change with the seasons. Their findings are based on a comprehensive seasonal gene expression map, which investigated over 54,000 genes in 80 tissues in ...

What Happens in the Brain When Your Mind Blanks

Apr. 24, 2025 — Mind blanking is a common experience with a wide variety of definitions ranging from feeling 'drowsy' to 'a complete absence of conscious awareness.' Neuroscientists and philosophers compile what we know about mind blanking, including insights from ...

Scientists Trick the Eye Into Seeing New Color 'Olo'

Apr. 23, 2025 — Scientists have created a new platform called 'Oz' that uses laser light to control up to 1,000 photoreceptors in the eye at once. Using Oz, the researchers showed people images, videos and a new, ultra-saturated shade of green that they have named ...

Latest Headlines

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Using ChatGPT, Students Might Pass a Course, but With a Cost

Apr. 22, 2025 — With the assumption that students are going to use artificial intelligence and large language models such as ChatGPT to do their homework, researchers set out to learn how well the free version of ...

More Americans Are Using Psilocybin -- Especially Those With Mental Health Conditions, Study Shows

Apr. 21, 2025 — Use of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical found in what is known as 'magic mushrooms,' has increased significantly nationwide since 2019, ...

How Thoughts Influence What the Eyes See

Apr. 18, 2025 — A new study by biomedical engineers and neuroscientists shows that the brain's visual regions play an active role in making sense of ...

Soft Brainstem Implant Delivers High-Resolution Hearing

Apr. 18, 2025 — A team has developed a soft, thin-film ABI. The device uses micrometer-scale platinum electrodes embedded in silicone, forming a pliable array just a fraction of a millimeter thick. This novel ...

Simulate Sound in 3D at a Finer Scale Than Humans Can Perceive

Apr. 15, 2025 — Ambisonic rendering is a way to simulate the precise locations of sounds in 3D, and an ambisonics algorithm has allowed researchers to create rich virtual 'soundscapes.'Researchers decided to test ...

AI Models of the Brain Could Serve as 'Digital Twins' in Research

Apr. 9, 2025 — In a new study, researchers created an AI model of the mouse visual cortex that predicts neuronal responses to visual ...

Scientists Complete Largest Wiring Diagram and Functional Map of the Brain to Date

Apr. 9, 2025 — From a tiny sample of tissue no larger than a grain of sand, scientists have come within reach of a goal once thought unattainable: building a ...

Estrogen and Progesterone Stimulate the Body to Make Opioids

Apr. 3, 2025 — Female hormones can suppress pain by making immune cells near the spinal cord produce opioids, a new study has found. This stops pain signals before they get to the brain. The discovery could help ...

The Experts That Can Outsmart Optical Illusions

Apr. 1, 2025 — Medical imaging experts are adept at solving common optical illusions, according to new research. The research is the first to show that people can be trained to do better at solving visual ...

First Therapy Chatbot Trial Shows AI Can Provide 'Gold-Standard' Care

Mar. 27, 2025 — Researchers conducted the first clinical trial of an AI-powered therapy chatbot and found that, on average, people with diagnosed mental disorders experienced clinically significant improvements in ...

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 ...

Artificial Intelligence Uses Less Energy by Mimicking the Human Brain

Mar. 26, 2025 — Electrical and computer engineers have developed a 'Super-Turing AI,' which operates more like the human brain. This new AI integrates certain processes instead of separating them and then ...

Postpartum Female Preference for Cooler Temperatures Linked to Brain Changes

Mar. 25, 2025 — Mothers experience major metabolic adaptations during pregnancy and lactation to support the development and growth of the new life. Although many metabolic changes have been studied, body ...

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 ...

Novel Memristors to Overcome AI's 'Catastrophic Forgetting'

Mar. 20, 2025 — Memristors consume extremely little power and behave similarly to brain cells. Researchers have now introduced novel memristive that offer significant advantages: they are more robust, function ...

Insomniac Fruit Fly Mutants Show Enhanced Memory Despite Severe Sleep Loss

Mar. 20, 2025 — Fruit fly mutants that have severe sleep deficits perform better at olfactory learning and memory tasks, according to a new study. The paradox of enhanced memory despite sleep loss could be explained ...

Why Don't We Remember Being a Baby? New Study Provides Clues

Mar. 20, 2025 — Though we learn so much during our first years of life, we can't, as adults, remember specific events from that time. Researchers have long believed we don't hold onto these experiences ...

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 ...

To the Brain, Esperanto and Klingon Appear the Same as English or Mandarin

Mar. 18, 2025 — New research finds the brain's language-processing network also responds to artificial languages such as Esperanto and languages made for TV, such as Klingon on 'Star Trek' and High ...

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 flexible learning produces our remarkably organized ...

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 ...

Paralyzed Man Moves Robotic Arm With His Thoughts

Mar. 6, 2025 — Researchers have enabled a man who is paralyzed to control a robotic arm through a device that relays signals from his brain to a computer. He was able to grasp, move and drop objects just by ...

Touchless Tech: Control Fabrics With a Wave of Your Finger

Mar. 6, 2025 — Researchers have created washable and durable magnetic field sensing electronic textiles -- thought to be the first of their kind -- which they say paves the way to transform use in clothing. This ...

The Pupil as a Window Into the Sleeping Brain

Mar. 5, 2025 — For the first time, researchers have been able to observe how the pupils react during sleep over a period of several hours. A look under the eyelids showed them that more happens in the brain during ...

ChatGPT on the Couch? How to Calm a Stressed-out AI

Mar. 3, 2025 — Distressing news and traumatic stories can cause stress and anxiety -- not only in humans, but these stories can also affect AI language models, such as ChatGPT. Researchers have now shown that these ...

Sometimes, When Competitors Collaborate, Everybody Wins

Feb. 27, 2025 — A framework helps rail system operators or other planners identify the best joint infrastructure projects to collaborate on with other firms. Their tool can tell an operator how much to invest, the ...

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 ...

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 ...

Adults Can Learn Absolute Pitch: New Research Challenges Long-Held Musical Belief

Feb. 12, 2025 — It's been a long-held belief that absolute pitch -- the ability to identify musical notes without reference -- is a rare gift reserved for a select few with special genetic gifts or those who ...

'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 ...