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Recent work using music highlights how past experiences and the immediate perceptual environment can shape imagination. Given that aspects of past experiences can be shared, depending on culture, as can the immediate perceptual environment, imaginings that might appear idiosyncratic or entirely subjective can in fact be broadly shared.

Schandry’s mental heartbeat tracking task is a widely used measure of interoception, assessing heartbeat perception. We classify the factors that contribute to performance on the task as (i) trait-like characteristics, (ii) expectation-related factors, and (iii) factors showing participants’ task set. We recommend conducting further research to better understand what exactly the task measures.

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People sometimes exhibit a costly preference for humans relative to algorithms, which is often defined as a domain-general algorithm aversion. I propose it is instead driven by biased evaluations of the self and other humans, which occurs more narrowly in domains where identity is threatened and when evaluative criteria are ambiguous.

Natural language is often seen as the single factor that explains the cognitive singularity of the human species. Instead, we propose that humans possess multiple internal languages of thought, akin to computer languages, which encode and compress structures in various domains (mathematics, music, shape…). These languages rely on cortical circuits distinct from classical language areas. Each is characterized

Cognitive neuroscience aims to provide biologically relevant accounts of cognition. Contemporary research linking spatial patterns of neural activity to psychological constructs describes 'where' hypothesised functions occur, but not 'how' these regions contribute to cognition. Technological, empirical, and conceptual advances allow this mechanistic gap to be closed by embedding patterns of functional

We argue that scientific studies have not directly assessed the key cognitive processes affected by smartphone use. We propose that smartphone use can be disruptively habitual, with the main detrimental consequence being an inability to exert prolonged mental effort. This inability might negatively affect real-life creativity and domain-specific knowledge acquisition.

Recent findings spanning fields, from braincases in paleoneurobiology to in vivo measurements in cognitive neuroscience, provide insights into the evolution of cognition. Here, we integrate these findings and propose that studying small, evolutionarily new cortical structures has significant implications for identifying new links between neuroanatomical substrates and human-specific aspects of cognition

Humans routinely miss important information that is ‘right in front of our eyes’, from overlooking typos in a paper to failing to see a cyclist in an intersection. Recent studies on these ‘Looked But Failed To See’ (LBFTS) errors point to a common mechanism underlying these failures, whether the missed item was an unexpected gorilla, the clearly defined target of a visual search, or that simple typo

Creative problem solving (CPS) in real-world contexts often relies on reorganization of existing knowledge to serve new, problem-relevant functions. However, classic creativity paradigms that minimize knowledge content are generally used to investigate creativity, including CPS. We argue that CPS research should expand consideration of knowledge-rich problem contexts, both in novices and experts within

Understanding the origins and maintenance of cognitive variation in animal populations is central to the study of the evolution of cognition. However, the brain is itself a complex, hierarchical network of heterogeneous components, from diverse cell types to diverse neuropils, each of which may be of limited use to study in isolation or prohibitively challenging to manipulate in situ. Consequently

While the visual environment contains massive amounts of information, we should not and cannot pay attention to all events. Instead, we need to direct attention to those events that have proven to be important in the past and suppress those that were distracting and irrelevant. Experiences molded through a learning process enable us to extract and adapt to the statistical regularities in the world

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Dishonesty is ubiquitous and imposes substantial financial and social burdens on society. Intuitively, dishonesty results from a failure of willpower to control selfish behavior. However, recent research suggests that the role of cognitive control in dishonesty is more complex. We review evidence that cognitive control is not needed to be honest or dishonest per se, but that it depends on individual

The long-term fate of a memory is not exclusively determined by the events occurring at the moment of encoding. Research at the cellular, circuit, and behavioral levels is beginning to reveal how neurochemical activations in the moments surrounding an event can retroactively and proactively rescue weak memory for seemingly mundane experiences. We review emerging evidence showing enhancement of weakly

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Adversity experiences have been linked to empathy and prosocial behavior. Here, we argue for unique additional advantages of such experiences, namely, the identity memberships that arise and their links to collective action and harmonious intergroup relations. We discuss challenges and future directions for the study of adversity as a source of identity.

Mirror neurons (MNs) were first described in a seminal paper in 1992 as a class of monkey premotor cells discharging during both action execution and observation. Despite their debated origin and function, recent studies in several species, from birds to humans, revealed that beyond MNs properly so called, a variety of cell types distributed among multiple motor, sensory, and emotional brain areas

Learning and remembering are fundamental to our lives, so what causes us to forget? Answers often highlight preparatory processes that precede learning, as well as mnemonic processes during the act of encoding or retrieval. Importantly, evidence now indicates that preparatory processes that precede retrieval attempts also have powerful influences on memory success or failure. Here, we review recent

Making inferences from behaviour to cognition is problematic due to a many-to-one mapping problem, in which any one behaviour can be generated by multiple possible cognitive processes. Attempts to cross this inferential gap when comparing human intelligence to that of animals or machines can generate great debate. Here, we discuss the challenges of making comparisons using ‘success-testing’ approaches

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Experimental studies in cognitive science typically focus on the population average effect. An alternative is to test each individual participant and then quantify the proportion of the population that would show the effect: the prevalence, or participant replication probability. We argue that this approach has conceptual and practical advantages.

Emerging research points to the power of language to shape how we think of gender in the professional domain. However, there is tension between two opposing strategies for communicating gender: gender marking and gender neutrality. Each strategy has the potential to combat gender bias, but also to reinforce it.

Humans spontaneously attribute character traits to strangers based on their facial appearance. Although these ‘first impressions’ typically have no basis in reality, some authors have assumed that they have an innate origin. By contrast, the Trait Inference Mapping (TIM) account proposes that first impressions are products of culturally acquired associative mappings that allow activation to spread

Empathy is critical to adjusting our behavior to the state of others. The past decade dramatically deepened our understanding of the biological origin of this capacity. We now understand that rodents robustly show emotional contagion for the distress of others via neural structures homologous to those involved in human empathy. Their propensity to approach others in distress strengthens this effect

The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) is divisive: while some believe it provides an unprecedentedly powerful approach to address the ‘hard problem’, others dismiss it on grounds that it is untestable. We argue that the appeal and applicability of IIT can be greatly widened if we distinguish two flavours of the theory: strong IIT, which identifies consciousness with specific properties

Humans do not integrate new information objectively: outcomes carrying a positive affective value and evidence confirming one’s own prior belief are overweighed. Until recently, theoretical and empirical accounts of the positivity and confirmation biases assumed them to be specific to ‘high-level’ belief updates. We present evidence against this account. Learning rates in reinforcement learning (RL)

Social performances pervade human interactions. Some autistic people describe their social performances as ‘camouflaging’ and engage in these performances to mitigate social challenges and survive in the neurotypical world. Here, we reconsider autistic camouflaging under the unifying framework of impression management (IM) by examining overlapping and unique motivations, neurocognitive mechanisms,

For the past half-century, cognitive and social scientists have struggled with the irrationalities of human choice behavior; people consistently make choices that are logically inconsistent. Is human choice behavior evolutionarily adaptive or is it an inefficient patchwork of competing mechanisms? In this review, I present an interdisciplinary synthesis arguing for a novel interpretation: choice is

Wealth, power, and status are distributed unevenly across social groups. A surge of recent research reveals that people being recognizing, representing, and reasoning about group-based patterns of inequity during the first years of life. We first synthesize recent research on what children learn about group-based social hierarchies as well as how this learning occurs. We then discuss how children not

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Learning is using past experiences to inform new behaviors and actions. Because all experiences are unique, learning always requires some generalization. An effective way of improving generalization is to expose learners to more variable (and thus often more representative) input. More variability tends to make initial learning more challenging, but eventually leads to more general and robust performance

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Insects feature some of the most complex societies in the animal kingdom, but a historic perception persists that such complexity emerges from interactions between individuals whose behaviours are largely guided by innate routines. Challenging this perception, recent work shows that insects feature many aspects of social intelligence found in vertebrate societies, such as individual recognition, learning

For the past 50 years, cognitive scientists have assumed that training attention and self-control must be effortful. However, growing evidence suggests promising effects of effortless training approaches such as nature exposure, flow experience, and effortless practice on attention and self-control. This opinion article focuses on effortless training of attention and self-control. We begin by introducing

Causal perturbations provide the strongest tests of the relationships between brain mechanism and brain function. In cognitive neuroscience, persuasive causal perturbations are difficult to achieve. In a recent paper, Ni et al. cleverly use the neuropsychiatric drug methylphenidate (Ritalin) to causally test the brain mechanisms that support goal-directed attention.

Neural dynamics are shaped and constrained by the projections of a small nucleus in the pons: the noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC). Much like a bow to the brain’s violin, activity in the LC lacks content specificity, but instead dynamically shapes the excitability and receptivity of neurons across the brain. In this review, we explain how the style of the bowing technique, which is analogous to different

Behavioral flexibility depends on our capacity to build and leverage abstract knowledge about tasks. Recently, two separate lines of research have implicated distinct brain networks in representing abstract task information: a frontoparietal cortical network, and a network involving the medial temporal lobe (MTL), medial prefrontal, and orbitofrontal cortex (OMPFC). These observations have mostly been

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An increasing recognition that brain and body are dynamically coupled has enriched our scientific understanding of mental health conditions. Peripheral signals interact centrally to influence how we think and feel, generating our sense of the internal condition of the body, a process known as interoception. Disruptions to this interoceptive system may contribute to clinical conditions, including anxiety

The brain is highly segregated. Multiple mechanisms ensure that different types of memories are processed independently. Nonetheless, information leaks out across these memory systems. Only recently has the diversity of these leaks been revealed. Different memory types (skills vs. facts) can interact in simple ways, either allowing or preventing their further processing, or in more complex ways, allowing

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Findings demonstrating decision-related neural activity preceding volitional actions have dominated the discussion about how science can inform the free will debate. These discussions have largely ignored studies suggesting that decisions might be influenced or biased by various unconscious processes. If these effects are indeed real, do they render subjects’ decisions less free or even unfree? Here

Life in an increasingly information-rich but highly uncertain world calls for an effective means of communicating uncertainty to a range of audiences. Senders prefer to convey uncertainty using verbal (e.g., likely) rather than numeric (e.g., 75% chance) probabilities, even in consequential domains, such as climate science. However, verbal probabilities can convey something other than uncertainty,

The neural correlates supporting our perceptual experience of the world remain largely unknown. Recent studies have shown how stimulus detection and related confidence involve evidence accumulation (EA) processes similar to those involved in perceptual decision-making. Here, we propose that independently from any tasks, percepts are not static but fade in and out of consciousness according to the dynamics

Technological advances are enabling roles for machines that present novel ethical challenges. The study of 'AI ethics' has emerged to confront these challenges, and connects perspectives from philosophy, computer science, law, and economics. Less represented in these interdisciplinary efforts is the perspective of cognitive science. We propose a framework – computational ethics – that specifies how

A person’s well-being depends heavily on forming and maintaining positive relationships, but people can be reluctant to connect in ways that would create or strengthen relationships. Emerging research suggests that miscalibrated social cognition may create psychological barriers to connecting with others more often. Specifically, people may underestimate how positively others will respond to their

How do habit and skill relate to one another? Among many traditions of habit research, we suggest that 'slip-of-action' habits are the type most likely to relate to motor skill. Habits are traditionally thought of as a property of behavior as a whole. We suggest, however, that habits are better understood at the level of intermediate computations and, at this level, habits can be considered to be equivalent

Human brains are exceptionally large, support distinctive cognitive processes, and evolved by natural selection to mediate adaptive behavior. Comparative biology situates the human brain within an evolutionary context to illuminate how it has been shaped by selection and how its structure relates to evolutionary function, while identifying the developmental and molecular changes that were involved

Women and men each represent about half the population, but people think of the concept person more as a man. Wardle et al. recently found that people also see face-like objects more as men than as women. This finding generates further questions on whether bias about concepts and faces might differ.

The ability to change initial decisions in the face of new or potentially conflicting information is fundamental to adaptive behavior. From perceptual tasks to multiple-choice tests, research has shown that changes of mind often improve task performance by correcting initial errors. Decision makers must, however, strike a balance between improvements that might arise from changes of mind and potential