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Context, not grammar, is key to structural priming Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-19 Yngwie A. Nielsen, Morten H. Christiansen
Structural priming – a change in processing after repeated exposure to a syntactic structure – has been put forward as evidence for the psychological reality of constituent structures derived from grammar. However, converging evidence from memory research, large language models (LLMs), and structural priming itself challenges the validity of mapping structural representations onto grammatical constituents
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How rethinking difficulties can shape important life outcomes Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-18 Veronika Job, Christopher Mlynski, Christina A. Bauer
Difficulties are a common part of life, ranging from daily challenges to chronic adversity. While difficulties can undermine well-being, they can also promote growth and resilience. What determines whether difficulty harms or helps? A growing body of research points to the role of difficulty beliefs, that is, general beliefs about whether dealing with difficulty is harmful or beneficial. Prior work
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Disagreement drives metacognitive development Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-17 Antonia F. Langenhoff, Bill D. Thompson, Mahesh Srinivasan, Jan M. Engelmann
Metacognition improves significantly over childhood, but the mechanisms underlying this development are poorly understood. We first review recent research demonstrating that disagreement prompts competent responses by young children across several metacognitive domains (confidence monitoring, information search, and source monitoring). We then propose a mechanistic model of how disagreement facilitates
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Fixed and flexible perceptual rhythms Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-17 Aaron Kaltenmaier, Matthew H. Davis, Clare Press
Our sensory inputs are never identical across time and contain temporal structure. Cognitive scientists have recently been fascinated by how these sensory rhythms interact with neural oscillatory rhythms to dictate perception. However, there are parallel lines of enquiry that propose clear, but apparently incompatible, answers to this question. One largely suggests that neural oscillations are flexible
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Statistical learning in spelling and reading Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-16 Rebecca Treiman, Brett Kessler
The statistical learning view of word reading and spelling is based on the ideas that writing systems have a rich statistical structure and that people implicitly pick up this structure as they learn to read and write. Whereas laboratory studies stress the speed and power of statistical learning, the evidence we review shows that adults with years of reading and writing experience do not always mirror
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Autism-related shifts in the brain’s information processing hierarchy Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-16 Boris C. Bernhardt, Sofie L. Valk, Seok-Jun Hong, Isabelle Soulières, Laurent Mottron
Despite considerable research efforts, mechanisms of autism remain incompletely understood. Key challenges in conceptualizing and managing autism include its diverse behavioral and cognitive phenotypes, a lack of reliable biomarkers, and the absence of a framework for integration. This review proposes that alterations in sensory-transmodal brain hierarchy are a system-level mechanism of atypical information
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Pseudosocial cognition and paranoia Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-14 Philip Corlett, Rosa Rossi-Goldthorpe, Praveen Suthaharan, Julia M. Sheffield, Santiago Castiello de Obeso, Cecilia Heyes
It has been argued that social processes are relevant to belief formation and maintenance and thence to persecutory delusions – the fixed false beliefs that others intend harm. We call this the social turn in delusions research. It suggests that paranoia is the purview of a specialized mechanism for coalitional cognition – thinking about group membership and reputation management. Here, we suggest
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Core systems of music perception Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-13 Samuel A. Mehr
Human musicality is supported by two distinct systems of representation: one for tonal perception, which contextualizes pitch input in reference to a hierarchy of tones; and one for metrical perception, which contextualizes temporal input in reference to a hierarchy of rhythmic groupings. Growing evidence suggests that the two systems are universal, automatic, encapsulated, and relatively early-developing
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The interoceptive origin of reinforcement learning Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-06-10 Lilian A. Weber, Debbie M. Yee, Dana M. Small, Frederike H. Petzschner
Rewards play a crucial role in sculpting all motivated behavior. Traditionally, research on reinforcement learning has centered on how rewards guide learning and decision-making. Here, we examine the origins of rewards themselves. Specifically, we discuss that the critical signal sustaining reinforcement for food is generated internally and subliminally during the process of digestion. As such, a shift
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Social odor as a source of learning in human infants Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-05-15 Antonia Düfeld, Robin Nehler, Emma Peplies, Sarah Jessen
Maternal odor has recently emerged as an important but ill-understood factor in sociocognitive learning in early human development. We propose that social odor plays its unique role in the first year of life through dissociable affective and perceptual mechanisms. These mechanisms yield distinct predictions for future studies of social odor.
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Understanding (and counteracting) the appeal of transgressive leaders Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-05-01 Gerben A. van Kleef
Transgressive leaders enjoy growing popularity. Synthesizing recent evidence, I propose that (i) such leaders are appealing not despite their transgressive behavior, but because of it, and (ii) this appeal hinges on perceived benefits emanating from their transgressions. This analysis points to new strategies for curtailing transgressive leaders.
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Origins of numbers: a shared language-of-thought for arithmetic and geometry? Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-04-14 Stanislas Dehaene, Mathias Sablé-Meyer, Lorenzo Ciccione
Concepts of exact number are often thought to originate from counting and the successor function, or from a refinement of the approximate number system (ANS). We argue here for a third origin: a shared language-of-thought (LoT) for geometry and arithmetic that involves primitives of repetition, concatenation, and recursive embedding. Applied to sets, those primitives engender concepts of exact integers
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Beyond binding: from modular to natural vision Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-04-14 H. Steven Scholte, Edward H.F. de Haan
The classical view of visual cortex organization as a collection of specialized modules processing distinct features like color and motion has profoundly influenced neuroscience for decades. This framework, rooted in historical philosophical distinctions between qualities, gave rise to the ‘binding problem’: how the brain integrates these separately processed features into coherent percepts. We present
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Artificial intimacy: ethical issues of AI romance Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-04-11 Daniel B. Shank, Mayu Koike, Steve Loughnan
The ethical frontier of artificial intelligence (AI) is expanding as humans form romantic relationships with AIs. Addressing ethical issues of AIs as invasive suitors, malicious advisers, and tools of exploitation requires new psychological research on why and how humans love machines.
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A framework for studying the conceptual structure of human relationships Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-04-05 Ava Q. Ma de Sousa, Hongbo Yu
How does the mind represent the structure of human relationships? In a recent article, Cheng et al. address this with an interdisciplinary approach combining principal component analysis (PCA), large-scale data collection of human ratings from diverse cultures, and Large Language Model (LLM)-based analyses of historical texts. They reveal a robust 5D framework and three core categories of relationships
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Studying memory narratives with natural language processing Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-03-19 Can Fenerci, Ziming Cheng, Donna Rose Addis, Buddhika Bellana, Signy Sheldon
Cognitive neuroscience research has begun to use natural language processing (NLP) to examine memory narratives with the hopes of gaining a nuanced understanding of the mechanisms underlying differences in memory recall, both across groups and tasks. However, the diversity of NLP approaches can make it challenging for researchers to know which techniques to use and when to apply them. We outline how
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Rapid connectivity modulations unify long-term and working memory Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-03-14 Eelke Spaak, Michael J. Wolff
Panichello et al. recently demonstrated that working memory (WM) information can be maintained without active neural firing. Instead, it is stored in rapidly modulating neural connectivity patterns. This validates the activity-silent model of WM, and unifies the mechanisms of long-term memory (LTM) and WM. Here, we highlight the ramifications of these findings.
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Collective future thinking at a time of geopolitical tension Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-03-12 Qi Wang, Nazike Mert
People in many Western countries hold a dim view of their collective future, a negativity bias not universally shared but related to societal factors, such as country well-being, nationalism, and news coverage. An optimistic outlook should be cultivated to promote civic engagement and constructive policymaking at this time of geopolitical tension.
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On the origin of memory neurons in the human hippocampus Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-03-04 Luca D. Kolibius, Sheena A. Josselyn, Simon Hanslmayr
The hippocampus is essential for episodic memory, yet its coding mechanism remains debated. In humans, two main theories have been proposed: one suggests that concept neurons represent specific elements of an episode, while another posits a conjunctive code, where index neurons code the entire episode. Here, we integrate new findings of index neurons in humans and other animals with the concept-specific
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The cognitive science of eyewitness memory Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-27 Laura Mickes, Brent M. Wilson, John T. Wixted
Recent insights from cognitive science have reshaped our understanding of the reliability of eyewitness memory. Many believe that eyewitness memory is unreliable, but a better way of thinking is that eyewitness memory, like other types of forensic evidence, can be contaminated. Because contaminated evidence yields unreliable results, the focus should be placed on testing uncontaminated memory evidence
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The devilish details affecting TDRL models in dopamine research Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-26 Zhewei Zhang, Kauê M. Costa, Angela J. Langdon, Geoffrey Schoenbaum
Over recent decades, temporal difference reinforcement learning (TDRL) models have successfully explained much dopamine (DA) activity. This success has invited heightened scrutiny of late, with many studies challenging the validity of TDRL models of DA function. Yet, when evaluating the validity of these models, the devil is truly in the details. TDRL is a broad class of algorithms sharing core ideas
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Understanding voice naturalness Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-25 Christine Nussbaum, Sascha Frühholz, Stefan R. Schweinberger
The perceived naturalness of a voice is a prominent property emerging from vocal sounds, which affects our interaction with both human and artificial agents. Despite its importance, a systematic understanding of voice naturalness is elusive. This is due to (i) conceptual underspecification, (ii) heterogeneous operationalization, (iii) lack of exchange between research on human and synthetic voices
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Sequence chunking through neural encoding of ordinal positions Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-21 Nai Ding
Grouping sensory events into chunks is an efficient strategy to integrate information across long sequences such as speech, music, and complex movements. Although chunks can be constructed based on diverse cues (e.g., sensory features, statistical patterns, internal knowledge) recent studies have consistently demonstrated that the chunks constructed by different cues are all tracked by low-frequency
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Continuous psychophysics: past, present, future Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-17 Johannes Burge, Kathryn Bonnen
Continuous target-tracking psychophysics is an innovative experimental paradigm that has emerged as a powerful tool for studying perception, cognition, and visually guided behavior. This review outlines how continuous psychophysics complements traditional forced-choice methods by facilitating rapid data collection, providing insights into the real-time dynamics of perception and action, and enabling
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Exploring the role of dimensionality transformation in episodic memory Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-13 Casper Kerrén, Daniel Reznik, Christian F. Doeller, Benjamin J. Griffiths
Episodic memory must accomplish two adversarial goals: encoding and storing a multitude of experiences without exceeding the finite neuronal structure of the brain, and recalling memories in vivid detail. Dimensionality reduction and expansion (‘dimensionality transformation’) enable the brain to meet these demands. Reduction compresses sensory input into simplified, storable codes, while expansion
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Defending the episodic memory account of aphantasia Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-11 Andrea Blomkvist
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Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-10 Bangjie Wang, Amanda LeBel, Anila M. D’Mello
Traditionally considered a motor structure, the cerebellum has been shown to play a key role in several cognitive functions. However, for decades, the cerebellum has been largely overlooked and even deliberately excluded from ‘whole-brain’ neuroimaging studies. Here, we propose that the continued exclusion of the cerebellum has limited our understanding of whole-brain function. We describe reasons
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Computational rationality and developmental neurodivergence Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-08 Samuel David Jones, Paul Rauwolf, Gert Westermann
The role of behaviour – choices, actions, and habits – in shaping neurodivergent development remains unclear. In this forum article we introduce computational rationality as a framework for understanding dynamic feedback between brain and behavioural development, and neurodevelopmental variation.
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Negative affect-driven impulsivity as hierarchical model-based overgeneralization Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-06 Aysenur Okan, Michael N. Hallquist
'If your mouth is burned by milk, you blow before you eat yogurt' ('Sütten ağzı yanan yoğurdu üfleyerek yer'). This Turkish proverb advises caution based on past experiences when similar situations are encountered. However, although we may infer similarities across experiences, each situation is a complex combination of many features, and generalizing across situations based on perceived similarities
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Choice overload and its consequences for animal decision-making Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-02-03 Jessie C. Tanner, Claire T. Hemingway
Animals routinely make decisions with important consequences for their survival and reproduction, but they frequently make suboptimal decisions. Here, we explore choice overload as one reason why animals may make suboptimal decisions, arguing that choice overload may have important ecological and evolutionary consequences, and propose future directions.
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The neural basis of the insight memory advantage Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-24 Maxi Becker, Roberto Cabeza
Creative problem solving and memory are inherently intertwined: memory accesses existing knowledge while creativity enhances it. Recent studies show that insights often accompanying creative solutions enhance long-term memory. This insight memory advantage (IMA) is explained by the 'insight as prediction error (PE)' hypothesis which states that insights arise from PEs updating predictive solution models
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Sensorimnemonic decisions: choosing memories versus sensory information Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-23 Levi Kumle, Anna C. Nobre, Dejan Draschkow
We highlight a fundamental psychological function that is central to many of our interactions in the environment – when to rely on memories versus sampling sensory information anew to guide behavior. By operationalizing sensorimnemonic decisions we aim to encourage and advance research into this pivotal process for understanding how memories serve adaptive cognition.
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The metabolic costs of cognition Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-13 Sharna D. Jamadar, Anna Behler, Hamish Deery, Michael Breakspear
Cognition and behavior are emergent properties of brain systems that seek to maximize complex and adaptive behaviors while minimizing energy utilization. Different species reconcile this trade-off in different ways, but in humans the outcome is biased towards complex behaviors and hence relatively high energy use. However, even in energy-intensive brains, numerous parsimonious processes operate to
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Why the belief in meritocracy is so pervasive Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-10 Ian R. Hadden, Céline Darnon, Lewis Doyle, Matthew J. Easterbrook, Sébastien Goudeau, Andrei Cimpian
People worldwide tend to believe that their societies are more meritocratic than they actually are. We propose the belief in meritocracy is widespread because it is rooted in simple, seemingly obvious causal–explanatory intuitions. Our proposal suggests solutions for debunking the myth of meritocracy and increasing support for equity-oriented policies.
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Working memory needs pointers Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-07 Edward Awh, Edward K. Vogel
Cognitive neuroscience has converged on a definition of working memory (WM) as a capacity-limited system that maintains highly accessible representations via stimulus-specific neural patterns. We argue that this standard definition may be incomplete. We highlight the fundamental need to recognize specific instances or tokens and to bind those tokens to the surrounding context. We propose that contextual
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Illusion, dilution, or loss: psychological ownership and GenAI Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-07 Erik Hermann
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) reshapes and challenges psychological ownership of created content. This article examines how GenAI disrupts original content creators’ and GenAI users’ sense of ownership and control and illustrates how both can perceive the illusion, dilution, and potential loss of control and ownership of content in the GenAI era.
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Why do primates have view cells instead of place cells? Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-06 Julio Martinez-Trujillo
Hippocampal place cells that encode the spatial location of an individual during navigation are widely reported in rodents. However, studies in primates have instead reported hippocampal cells that encode views of the environment. Evolutionary adaptations for navigating during night and day may explain the divergence of hippocampal representations between species.
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Processes and measurements: a framework for understanding neural oscillations in field potentials Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Sander van Bree, Daniel Levenstein, Matthew R. Krause, Bradley Voytek, Richard Gao
Various neuroscientific theories maintain that brain oscillations are important for neuronal computation, but opposing views claim that these macroscale dynamics are ‘exhaust fumes’ of more relevant processes. Here, we approach the question of whether oscillations are functional or epiphenomenal by distinguishing between measurements and processes, and by reviewing whether causal or inferentially useful
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Beyond executive functioning: rethinking the impact of bilingualism Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Ellen Bialystok
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Cognitive impairments in chronic pain: a brain aging framework Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Lei Zhao, Libo Zhang, Yilan Tang, Yiheng Tu
Chronic pain (CP) not only causes physical discomfort but also significantly affects cognition. This review first summarizes emerging findings that reveal complex associations between CP and cognitive impairments, and then presents neuroimaging evidence showing aging-related brain alterations in CP and proposes a framework where accelerated brain aging links CP to cognitive impairments. This framework
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Is adaptation the new ‘bilingual advantage’? Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2025-01-02 Esti Blanco-Elorrieta
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Beyond punishment: psychological foundations of restorative interventions Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-27 Katherine McAuliffe, Julia Marshall, Abby McLaughlin
Work on the psychology of justice has largely focused on punishment. However, punishment is not our only strategy for dealing with conflict. Rather, emerging work suggests that people often respond to transgressions by compensating victims, involving third-party mediators, and engaging in forgiveness. These responses are linked in that they are involved in more restorative than retributive justice
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Generative adversarial collaborations: a new model of scientific discourse Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-20 Benjamin Peters, Gunnar Blohm, Ralf Haefner, Leyla Isik, Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Jennifer S. Lieberman, Carlos R. Ponce, Gemma Roig, Megan A.K. Peters
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Frontoparietal asymmetries leading to conscious perception Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-20 Paolo Bartolomeo, Jianghao Liu, Tal Seidel Malkinson
Recent human intracerebral recordings reveal that frontoparietal circuits linked by the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) have critical, hemisphere-asymmetric contributions to conscious perception. Right-hemisphere networks are crucial for attention-based prioritization of information; left-hemisphere regions contribute to perceptual decisions and model building. These asymmetries confirm and
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Finding order in chaos: influences of environmental complexity and predictability on development Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-19 Katie L. Lancaster, Sam V. Wass
Environments are dynamic and complex. Some children experience more predictable early life environments than others. Here, we consider how moment-by-moment complexity and predictability in our early environments influence development. New studies using wearable sensors are quantifying this environmental variability at a fine temporal resolution across hierarchically structured physical and social features
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Empirical approaches to determining quality space computations for consciousness: a response to Dołęga et al. and Song Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-19 Stephen M. Fleming, Nicholas Shea
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Tracking minds in communication Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-17 Paula Rubio-Fernandez, Marlene D. Berke, Julian Jara-Ettinger
How does social cognition help us communicate through language? At what levels does this interaction occur? In classical views, social cognition is independent of language, and integrating the two can be slow, effortful, and error-prone. But new research into word level processes reveals that communication is brimming with social micro-processes that happen in real time, guiding even the simplest choices
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Aphantasia as imagery blindsight Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-17 Matthias Michel, Jorge Morales, Ned Block, Hakwan Lau
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Physically activated modes of attentional control Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-16 Barry Giesbrecht, Tom Bullock, Jordan Garrett
As we navigate through the day, our attentional control processes are constantly challenged by changing sensory information, goals, expectations, and motivations. At the same time, our bodies and brains are impacted by changes in global physiological state that can influence attentional processes. Based on converging lines of evidence from brain recordings in physically active humans and nonhumans
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Models of human hippocampal specialization: a look at the electrophysiological evidence Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-12 Anne Freelin, Cody Wolfe, Bradley Lega
From an anatomical perspective, the concept that the anterior and posterior hippocampus fulfill distinct cognitive roles may seem unsurprising. When compared with the posterior hippocampus, the anterior region is proportionally larger, with visible expansion of the CA1 subfield and intimate continuity with adjacent medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures such as the uncus and amygdala. However, the functional
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The role of alpha oscillations in resisting distraction Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-12 Mathilde Bonnefond, Ole Jensen
The role of alpha oscillations (8–13 Hz) in suppressing distractors is extensively debated. One debate concerns whether alpha oscillations suppress anticipated visual distractors through increased power. Whereas some studies suggest that alpha oscillations support distractor suppression, others do not. We identify methodological differences that may explain these discrepancies. A second debate concerns
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Memory updating and the structure of event representations Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-11 Christopher N. Wahlheim, Jeffrey M. Zacks
People form memories of specific events and use those memories to make predictions about similar new experiences. Living in a dynamic environment presents a challenge: How does one represent valid prior events in memory while encoding new experiences when things change? There is evidence for two seemingly contradictory classes of mechanism: One differentiates outdated event features by making them
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Sound amongst the din: primate strategies against noise Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-11 Julia Löschner, Steffen R. Hage
Ambient noise disrupts vocal communication amongst animals. Recent studies show that some species, such as marmosets, can rapidly adjust the patterns of ongoing calls according to noisy environments. This substantial vocal flexibility reveals that non-human primates have more advanced cognitive control over when and what to vocalize than previously thought.
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Social structure and the evolutionary ecology of inequality Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-03 Daniel Redhead
From rising disparities in income to limited socio-political representation for minority groups, inequality is a topic of perennial interest for contemporary society. Research in the evolutionary sciences has started to investigate how social structure allows inequality to evolve, but is developing in silo from existing work in the social and cognitive sciences. I synthesise these literatures to present
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How can a 4-day working week increase wellbeing at no cost to performance? Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-12-02 Charlotte L. Rae, Emma Russell
The 4-day working week is gaining interest, with international trials reporting enhanced staff wellbeing and performance, despite spending less time on the job. Here, we argue that improved performance on a 4-day working week arises through two psychological mechanisms of recovery and motivation: because better rested, better motivated brains, create better work.
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Anxiety involves altered planning Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-11-27 Paul B. Sharp
Clinicians have suggested but not shown how anxiety involves altered planning. Here, I synthesize and extend computational models of planning in a framework that can be used to explain planning biases in anxiety. To spur its development, I spotlight two of its promising areas: task construal and meta-control.
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Global brain asymmetry Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-11-19 Yi Pu, Clyde Francks, Xiang-Zhen Kong
Lateralization is a defining characteristic of the human brain, often studied through localized approaches that focus on interhemispheric differences between homologous pairs of regions. It is also important to emphasize an integrative perspective of global brain asymmetry, in which hemispheric differences are understood through global patterns across the entire brain.
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Cognitive maps and schizophrenia Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-11-19 Matthew M. Nour, Yunzhe Liu, Mohamady El-Gaby, Robert A. McCutcheon, Raymond J. Dolan
Structured internal representations (‘cognitive maps’) shape cognition, from imagining the future and counterfactual past, to transferring knowledge to new settings. Our understanding of how such representations are formed and maintained in biological and artificial neural networks has grown enormously. The cognitive mapping hypothesis of schizophrenia extends this enquiry to psychiatry, proposing
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Executive control fluctuations underlie behavioral variability in anthropoids Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-11-18 Farshad A. Mansouri, Rogier A. Kievit, Mark J. Buckley
In complex tasks requiring cognitive control, humans show trial-by-trial alterations in response time (RT), which are evident even when sensory-motor or other contextual aspects of the task remain stable. Exaggerated intra-individual RT variability is associated with brain injuries and frequently seen in aging and neuropsychological disorders. In this opinion, we discuss recent electrophysiology and
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Understanding the qualitative nature of human consciousness Trends Cogn. Sci. (IF 16.7) Pub Date : 2024-11-15 Chen Song