Tag: NEUROSCIENCE
What can we learn from her?Positive Imagining Changes the Brain in Seconds
Vividly imagining a positive interaction with someone can increase how much you like them — and even alter how your brain stores information about that person. During imagined encounters, participants developed stronger preferences, and brain scans revealed activity patterns similar to those seen when people learn from real rewarding experiences.
AI-Powered Bionic Hand Restores Natural, Intuitive Grasping Ability
A new study shows that integrating artificial intelligence with advanced proximity and pressure sensors allows a commercial bionic hand to grasp objects in a natural, intuitive way—reducing cognitive effort for amputees. By training an artificial neural network on grasping postures, each finger could independently “see” objects and automatically move into the correct position, improving grip security and precision.
How the Brain Interprets Sarcasm, Tone, and Hidden Meaning
A large study of 800 adults shows that pragmatic language skills—the ability to understand sarcasm, indirect requests, tone, and nonliteral meaning—organize into three distinct cognitive clusters. These clusters draw on social-rule knowledge, understanding of how the physical world works, and sensitivity to speech intonation.
Blinking Drops When We Strain to Hear Speech
People blink less when working harder to understand speech in noisy environments, suggesting that blinking is tightly linked to cognitive effort. Across two experiments, blink rates consistently dropped during key moments of listening, especially when background noise made speech difficult to process.
Anti-Inflammatory Treatments Show Promise for Depression
A new analysis shows that anti-inflammatory medications may help reduce symptoms for a subset of people with depression who also have chronic, low-grade inflammation. By reviewing randomized controlled trials that specifically enrolled individuals with elevated inflammatory markers, researchers found that anti-inflammatory treatments significantly reduced both overall depressive symptoms and anhedonia.
