Cognitive Science

By tracking brain activity when an animal stops to look around its environment, neuroscientists at the Johns Hopkins University believe they can mark the birth of a memory. Using lab rats on a circular track, James Knierim, professor of neuroscience...

The sense of smell might seem intuitive, almost something you take for granted. But researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center have found that memory of specific odors depends on the ability of the brain to learn, process and recall accurately...

Pinecone or pine nut? Friend or foe? Distinguishing between the two requires that we pay special attention to the telltale characteristics of each. And as it turns out, us humans aren't the only ones up to the task. According to...

Struggling to learn a foreign language? Try singing it. Research published in the scientific journal Psychology of Music has found that songs can help people learn to better pronounce and remember foreign vocabulary. Songs are already used by educators to support...

A joint study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, the University at Buffalo, and the University of Toronto has found that a computer–vision system can distinguish between real or faked expressions of pain more accurately than can...

Memories are difficult to produce, often fragile, and dependent on any number of factors—including changes to various types of nerves. In the common fruit fly—a scientific doppelganger used to study human memory formation—these changes take place in multiple parts of...

Evolutionary analysis applied to the relationship between North American and Central Siberian languages may indicate that people moved out from the Bering Land Bridge, with some migrating back to central Asia and others into North America, according to a paper...

Before I left the house this morning, I let the cat out and started the dishwasher. Or was that yesterday? Very often, our memories must distinguish not just what happened and where, but when an event occurred — and what...

The human sense of smell does not get the respect it deserves, new research suggests. In an experiment led by Andreas Keller, of Rockefeller's Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, researchers tested volunteers' ability to distinguish between complex mixtures of scents....

Misplaced your keys? Can't remember someone's name? Didn't notice the stop sign? Those who frequently experience such cognitive lapses now have an explanation. Psychologists from the University of Bonn have found a connection between such everyday lapses and the DRD2...

Researchers part-funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) have shown that, contrary to what was previously assumed, suppressing unwanted memories reduces their unconscious influences on subsequent behaviour, and have shed light on how this process happens in the brain. The...

Cognitive scientists may have produced the strongest evidence yet that humans have separate and distinct cognitive systems with which they can categorize, classify, and conceptualize their worlds. “Our finding that there are distinct, discrete systems has implications for the fields...

In order to function properly, the human brain requires the ability not only to store but also to forget: Through memory loss, unnecessary information is deleted and the nervous system retains its plasticity. A disruption of this process can lead...