Cognitive Science

Scientists have solved a longstanding mystery of the central nervous system, showing how a key protein gets to the right spot to launch electrical impulses that enable communication of nerve signals to and from the brain.

Mindfulness meditation programs may help reduce anxiety, depression and pain in some individuals, according to a review of medical literature by Madhav Goyal, M.D., M.P.H., of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and colleagues.

It is widely believed that people are bad at naming odours. This has led researchers to suggest smell representations are simply not accessible to the language centers of the brain. But is this really so?

A body of research known as labeling theory has found that some labels can result in stigmatization and act as self-fulfilling prophecies. New research suggests this theory applies to youth labeled with learning disabilities. High school students labeled as having a...

Watching another woman be subjected to dominant male behavior can lower women's performance on math tests, according to research published in the November issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science.

To learn new motor skills, the brain must be plastic: able to rapidly change the strengths of connections between neurons, forming new patterns that accomplish a particular task. However, if the brain were too plastic, previously learned skills would be...

The common expression ’time flies when you’re having fun‘ suggests that people’s perception of duration is moderated by the impact of their emotions and the activities they are performing; in other words, emotions such as fear or sadness affect people’s...

Scientists are a step closer to understanding how some of the brain's 100 billion nerve cells co-ordinate their communication. The study is published today in the journal Cell Reports.

Faced with inevitable pain, most people choose to get it out of the way as soon as possible, according to research published this week in PLOS Computational Biology.

People who can accurately remember details of their daily lives going back decades are as susceptible as everyone else to forming fake memories, UC Irvine psychologists and neurobiologists have found.

The anxiety people feel making investment decisions may have more to do with the traffic they dealt with earlier than the potential consequences they face with the investment, but not if the decision-maker has high emotional intelligence a recent study...

University of Arizona doctoral degree candidate Jay Sanguinetti has authored a new study, published online in the journal Psychological Science, that indicates that the brain processes and understands visusal input that we may never consciously perceive.

To survive, animals must explore their world to find the necessities of life. It's a complex task, requiring them to form them a mental map of their environment to navigate the safest and fastest routes to food and water. They...

What makes a good reader? First, you have to know how to read the words on a page and understand them -- but there's a higher-level step to reading comprehension.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and other research facilities have contributed significantly towards a first explanation for the development of music.