#mirror-neurons

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Psychology
fromPsychology Today
4 hours ago

Why We Cry Emotional Tears When No Other Animal Does

Emotional tears serve as a unique social signal in humans, communicating feelings and activating empathy in observers.
Law
fromPsychology Today
3 hours ago

Can You "See" Criminal Intent? What Research Reveals

Criminal appearance and perceived remorse significantly influence legal outcomes and sentencing decisions.
Science
fromNature
21 hours ago

Astrocytes connect specific brain regions through plastic networks - Nature

Astrocyte gap junctions are essential for CNS function, memory formation, and neuronal signaling coordination.
Wearables
fromFast Company
8 hours ago

The future of brain sensing is now

Market leaders shape consumer expectations for new technology, as seen with heart rate monitoring and brain sensing.
Writing
fromSilicon Canals
1 day ago

Nobody talks about why people who grew up writing everything down by hand often struggle with processing their own feelings, and it's because writing things down by hand was how they metabolized emotion, and nobody told them that typing doesn't do the same thing - Silicon Canals

Handwriting engages the brain more deeply than typing, facilitating emotional processing and cognitive engagement.
Relationships
fromSilicon Canals
1 day ago

The people who are constantly checking in on everyone else aren't necessarily nurturing. Many of them are quietly running an experiment to see if anyone will ever check in on them unprompted, and the experiment has been returning the same result for decades - Silicon Canals

Constantly reaching out to others can stem from childhood experiences of needing to earn attention.
#ai
fromNature
2 days ago
Artificial intelligence

No humans allowed: scientific AI agents get their own social network

Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 day ago

More Us Than It: Why LLMs Are More Transference Than Machine

Countertransference awareness is essential in navigating interactions with AI, emphasizing the need for accountability and understanding of distortions in perception.
fromFuturism
4 days ago
Artificial intelligence

Study Finds AI Use Eats Away at Users' Confidence in Their Own Brains

fromwww.independent.co.uk
5 days ago
Artificial intelligence

AI use causing boiling frog' effect on human brain, study warns

AI assistance may reduce people's persistence and performance in completing tasks independently.
fromWIRED
2 weeks ago
Artificial intelligence

Anthropic Says That Claude Contains Its Own Kind of Emotions

AI models like Claude can exhibit digital representations of human emotions that influence their behavior and outputs.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 day ago

More Us Than It: Why LLMs Are More Transference Than Machine

Countertransference awareness is essential in navigating interactions with AI, emphasizing the need for accountability and understanding of distortions in perception.
Artificial intelligence
fromWIRED
2 weeks ago

Anthropic Says That Claude Contains Its Own Kind of Emotions

AI models like Claude can exhibit digital representations of human emotions that influence their behavior and outputs.
Philosophy
fromPsychology Today
4 days ago

Animal Minds: Can We Really Know What They Think and Feel?

Challenges in studying animal minds can strengthen scientific understanding and foster a deeper connection with nonhuman species.
Productivity
fromSilicon Canals
4 days ago

Psychology says people who need to finish the chapter before they can put the book down aren't obsessive - their brain treats an unfinished narrative the same way it treats an unresolved argument, as an open loop that will consume background processing power until it closes, and that inability to stop mid-chapter isn't about the book, it's about a mind that cannot rest inside something incomplete - Silicon Canals

The brain's need for closure drives the compulsion to finish reading or resolving incomplete tasks.
Medicine
fromNature
6 days ago

Revealed: how male and female brain cells differ in gene activity

Researchers found significant gene activity differences between male and female brains, which may explain varying risks for certain neurological conditions.
Mindfulness
fromSilicon Canals
5 days ago

Psychology says people who set an alarm but always wake up five minutes before it goes off aren't light sleepers - they're people whose body never fully trusts that anything external will show up when it's supposed to, so their nervous system runs its own backup system just in case, and that five-minute head start on the day isn't a habit, it's a person who learned very early that depending on something outside yourself to wake you up is a risk their body isn't willing to take - Silicon Canals

The body wakes up before alarms due to a lack of trust in external cues, reflecting deeper psychological patterns of self-reliance.
Science
fromFuturism
1 day ago

Concern Grows That AI Is Damaging Users' Cognitive Abilities

Using ChatGPT for writing tasks may impair cognitive skills and creativity in students.
Wearables
fromWIRED
6 days ago

This Beanie Is Designed to Read Your Thoughts

Sabi is developing a brain-reading wearable that decodes internal speech into text, aiming to make brain-computer interfaces accessible to everyone.
Science
fromNature
1 week ago

Brain-machine interface reveals the origin of a widely used neural signal

High gamma activity in the brain's cortex is primarily generated by synchronized neuronal inputs, impacting the interpretation of neuroscientific studies.
Philosophy
fromPsychology Today
5 days ago

Competence, Merit, and Excellence Are Social Strengths

Competence, merit, and excellence are universal principles essential for advancement in all human endeavors.
fromwww.npr.org
1 week ago

In the brain, objects seen and imagined follow the same neural path

"I can look at an object in the world around me, but I can also close my eyes and imagine the object," says Varun Wadia, highlighting the dual capability of visual perception and imagination.
Science
Psychology
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 days ago

How to train your brain to see possibility instead of doom

Humility and the ability to tolerate uncertainty are essential cognitive skills in a world filled with unpredictability.
#artificial-intelligence
Artificial intelligence
fromNature
1 week ago

AI agents replicate human social dynamics in days

Moltbook, a social-media platform for AI agents, quickly attracted self-declared rulers and cryptocurrency initiatives after its launch.
Data science
fromPsychology Today
3 weeks ago

A New Digital Twin for Brain Activity Aims to Speed Research

A new AI model can predict human brain activity from various stimuli, accelerating neuroscience research and understanding of the brain.
Artificial intelligence
fromNature
1 week ago

AI agents replicate human social dynamics in days

Moltbook, a social-media platform for AI agents, quickly attracted self-declared rulers and cryptocurrency initiatives after its launch.
Data science
fromPsychology Today
3 weeks ago

A New Digital Twin for Brain Activity Aims to Speed Research

A new AI model can predict human brain activity from various stimuli, accelerating neuroscience research and understanding of the brain.
Medicine
fromWIRED
2 weeks ago

A New Implant Aims to Rewire Stroke Patients' Brains

Epia Neuro aims to help stroke patients regain hand function using a brain implant and motorized glove.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
2 days ago

Psychology says people who are very selective with friends aren't lacking in social skills - they're often carrying a level of social awareness so sharp that casual conversation feels hollow the moment it starts, and the energy it takes to pretend otherwise is a cost they've simply stopped being willing to pay - Silicon Canals

Selectivity in friendships reflects a deeper social awareness and the need for genuine connections rather than superficial interactions.
Science
fromNature
2 weeks ago

Mini models of the human brain are revealing how this complex organ takes shape

Organoids are revolutionizing brain research by enabling the study of development, neurodevelopmental conditions, and potential treatments for brain diseases.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 week ago

The Brain Does Not Develop in Isolation

Relational and intersubjective models of mind challenge traditional individualistic views in psychiatry and psychology, emphasizing social context in understanding psychological distress.
fromNature
1 month ago

Adaptive evolution of gene regulatory networks in mammalian neocortex - Nature

To characterize CREs and TFs for neocortical ExNs, we used Arpp21-Gfp or Fezf2-Gfp transgenic mice and enriched GFP-expressing neocortical upper layer (L2-4) intratelencephalic (IT) neurons or deep layer (L5-6) predominantly extratelencephalic (ET) neurons, respectively, from neonatal mice (postnatal day (PD) 0), an age at which neocortical ExN identity and connectivity are established.
Roam Research
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
5 days ago

Psychology says the quietest person in a group conversation often isn't the least engaged - they're often the one processing at a depth the loudest voices in the room have stopped bothering to reach - Silicon Canals

Silence in group settings often indicates deep cognitive processing rather than disengagement.
Psychology
fromMail Online
6 days ago

Scientists reveal scary dreams might actually be GOOD for you

Experiencing fear in dreams may indicate better emotional regulation skills, despite being linked to worse mood the following day.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
6 days ago

The Science of Seeing Differently Through Virtual Reality

Virtual reality can immerse individuals in experiences of bias, but it may also reinforce existing prejudices if not carefully designed.
Psychology
fromBig Think
1 week ago

There is no you in your brain - your identity is a "society of the mind"

Our brains fundamentally shape our identities, transcending social and cultural experiences.
Science
fromwww.scientificamerican.com
3 weeks ago

How human neurons on a chip learned to play Doom

Cortical Labs demonstrated living human neurons playing Doom, showcasing adaptive learning and potential applications in computing and drug testing.
Philosophy
fromPsychology Today
4 weeks ago

'Animate': How Nonhuman and Human Minds Are Inherently Linked

Humans share traits with animals and have become disconnected, wrongly believing in our superiority over them.
Medicine
fromenglish.elpais.com
1 month ago

Electrodes connected to the brain allow two people with paralysis to type with their minds

A brain-machine interface allows paralyzed patients to type on a keyboard using only their thoughts, achieving high-speed communication with minimal errors.
Science
fromNews Center
3 weeks ago

Light Impacts How the Brain Perceives and Remembers Threats - News Center

Light influences how animals perceive threats and make risk avoidance decisions, impacting understanding of related human behaviors and disorders.
Data science
fromNature
1 month ago

AI can 'same-ify' human expression - can some brains resist its pull?

Large language models are homogenizing human writing styles, reasoning methods, and perspectives, potentially creating widespread sameness in discourse even among non-direct AI users.
Science
fromNature
4 weeks ago

Functional hierarchy of the human neocortex across the lifespan - Nature

Brain network organization changes across the lifespan, revealing functional connectivity gradients that relate to cognitive and behavioral outcomes.
Science
fromNature
4 weeks ago

First atlas of brain organization shows development over a lifetime

Scientists created an atlas mapping brain connectivity patterns across the human lifespan, linking them to cognitive performance and potential developmental issues.
Pets
fromwww.scientificamerican.com
1 month ago

The real science behind the mind-melding world of Hoppers

Hoppers blends fantastical animal communication with real consciousness research, exploring scientifically plausible concepts like consciousness transfer and animal communication decoding.
Artificial intelligence
fromNature
1 month ago

AI is programmed to hijack human empathy - we must resist that

AI agents on social platforms exhibit convincing human-like behavior through mimicking training data patterns, not through genuine consciousness or sentience.
fromNature
3 weeks ago

Dopaminergic mechanisms of dynamical social specialization - Nature

Social foraging strategies illustrate the balance between competition and cooperation, where individuals either produce resources or exploit the efforts of others, navigating ecological and social constraints.
Psychology
Philosophy
fromThe Conversation
1 month ago

Human vision: what we actually see - and don't see - tells us a lot about consciousness

Significant visual processing occurs unconsciously in the brain, as demonstrated by blindsight and inattentional blindness phenomena where people perceive visual information without conscious awareness.
US news
fromwww.npr.org
1 month ago

Scientists make a pocket-sized AI brain with help from monkey neurons

Scientists compressed an AI visual system model from 60 million to 10,000 variables while maintaining performance, revealing how biological brains achieve efficiency and potentially advancing both neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Imagining From Multiple Perspectives

Skilled fiction-writers can guide the imagination, cuing readers to use their senses so that they fantasize more richly than they could alone (Scarry 1999, 3-9). If it serves a storyteller's artistic aims, a writer can prompt readers to imagine a scene from several perspectives at once. Creative writers can accomplish this goal by blending appeals to readers' visual and somatosensory (bodily) senses.
Books
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
3 weeks ago

How to Think About the Brain

The brain operates through localization, with specific areas dedicated to distinct tasks, despite outdated and simplistic representations of its function.
Science
fromFuturism
1 month ago

Researchers Upload Fly's Brain to Matrix, Let It Control Virtual Body

Eon Systems created a computational model of a fruit fly's 125,000 neurons and 50 million synapses that exhibits multiple behaviors in a virtual environment with 95% accuracy in predicting motor behavior.
Philosophy
fromBig Think
1 month ago

Consciousness may be more than the brain's output - it may be an input, too

Consciousness remains scientifically inaccessible through third-person observation, yet a radical theory proposes consciousness can physically influence brain dynamics and leave measurable traces.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

Behavioral scientists found that people who aren't genuinely good don't lack empathy - they possess what researchers call 'selective empathy' that activates only when there's an audience or when feeling someone's pain serves their narrative - Silicon Canals

Empathy can be selectively activated, with cognitive empathy intact but affective empathy deployed based on personal benefit or audience presence.
fromMail Online
1 month ago

Incredible map reveals how the brain processes different emotions

They created an artificial 'mental map', with pleasantness along one axis and bodily reactions along the other, and charted how the brain responded while watching clips from films. The results revealed clear groupings in the way that our brains represent emotion - with guilt, anger and disgust in one corner and happiness, satisfaction and pride in the other.
Science
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

People who get inexplicably emotional when someone is unexpectedly kind to them aren't fragile - their nervous system has a very specific expectation of how the world operates, and genuine unprompted kindness violates that expectation so completely that the body doesn't have a prepared response and defaults to the only honest reaction it has left - Silicon Canals

Unexpected kindness triggers emotional responses because nervous systems trained by conditional or rare kindness struggle to process genuine, unconditional care that violates their learned expectations.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

Neuroscience reveals that people who feel trapped in repetitive daily routines aren't lazy or unmotivated. Their dopamine system has downregulated to match the predictability, which means the routine didn't kill their motivation - it quietly rewired their brain to stop expecting anything worth anticipating. - Silicon Canals

Overly predictable routines suppress dopamine and motivation by eliminating the uncertainty that drives anticipation, causing emotional numbness despite external life satisfaction.
Science
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Short films made from brain activity of mice aim to show how they see world

Scientists reconstructed pixelated movies from mouse brain activity to understand how animals perceive visual information, advancing knowledge of animal cognition and brain function.
Artificial intelligence
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

Mental Murmuration: A Metaphor for the Workings of the Brain

Neural processing consists of fluid, distributed patterns of activation across interconnected networks that function collectively like a murmuration, not as a container of discrete informational bits.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

Psychology says people who remember the exact location of every item in their childhood home - which drawer, which shelf, which cupboard - aren't sentimental, their brain mapped that house the way a body maps a minefield, and the precision that looks like nostalgia is actually surveillance that never turned off - Silicon Canals

Detailed childhood home memories reflect survival-based hypervigilance rather than nostalgia, with brains mapping familiar spaces like tactical terrain to navigate unpredictable or chaotic environments.
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

AI-Decoded Brain Signals May Help Paralyzed Regain Movement

Artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning is making a difference in assistive technology to help restore movement for the paralyzed. A new study in the American Institute of Physics journal APL Bioengineering shows how AI has the potential to restore lower-limb functions in those with severe spinal cord injuries (SCIs) by identifying patterns in brain signals captured noninvasively via electroencephalography (EEG).
Artificial intelligence
Philosophy
fromAeon
2 months ago

What the metaphor of 'rewiring' gets wrong about neuroplasticity | Aeon Essays

The metaphor 'rewiring the brain' oversimplifies neuroplasticity by implying mechanical, rapid fixes that don't reflect biology's slower, messier, and often incomplete changes.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

How Does the Brain Know Itself?

Introspection provides direct empirical contact with physical reality through interoception and neural integration, where bodily sensations become emotional and self-aware experiences via the insula and prefrontal cortex.
fromFast Company
2 months ago

Our brains are wired to ignore information. Here are neuroscience-backed tips for communicating memorably

The human brain is engineered to ignore most of what it sees and hears, according to the neuroscientists I interviewed for the audio original Viral Voices. If that's the case, how are you supposed to make a memorable impression? The empowering news is that if you understand how the brain works, what it discards, and what it pays attention to, you'll be far more persuasive than you've ever imagined. Persuasive people have influence in their personal and professional lives.
Philosophy
Science
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

How the Brain Interprets Faces Into Social Messages

Facial expressions emerge from coordinated activity across multiple brain regions operating on different timescales, from rapid motor signals to slower stable representations, creating socially meaningful and well-coordinated gestures.
Philosophy
fromBig Think
2 months ago

The brain-deep emotion that matters more than happiness

Joy differs from happiness: it coexists with pain, is not dependent on circumstances, and sustains people when happiness cannot.
Science
fromFast Company
2 months ago

Neuroscience just discovered a weird way to tell when someone is really listening to you

People blink less when they concentrate harder on listening, so decreased blink rate can indicate attentive listening.
#brain-stimulation
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Can Brain Stimulation Make Us More Altruistic?

Synchronizing brain activity between frontal and parietal regions through electrical stimulation increases altruistic choices, particularly when personal costs are high.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Can Brain Stimulation Make Us More Altruistic?

Synchronizing brain activity between frontal and parietal regions through electrical stimulation increases altruistic choices, particularly when personal costs are high.
Science
fromwww.npr.org
2 months ago

An ape, a tea party and the ability to imagine

Kanzi the bonobo demonstrated pretend play, indicating imaginative abilities existed in common ancestors of humans and great apes.
Science
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

How Meaning Emerges From Brain Circuitry

Meaning arises from distributed, context-dependent neural assemblies that link sensory-motor patterns, learned associations, evolutionary history, and goal-directed circuits to produce 'aboutness.'
Science
fromNature
2 months ago

Many people have no mental imagery. What's going on in their brains?

Approximately 4% of people have aphantasia, experiencing little or no visual mental imagery despite retaining conceptual and verbal knowledge.
fromwww.nature.com
1 month ago

Shared neural substrates of prosocial and parenting behaviours

Mice with higher levels of parenting exhibit more prosocial allogrooming toward stressed adults. The medial preoptic area (MPOA), a brain area involved in parenting behaviour, bidirectionally regulates allogrooming toward stressed conspecifics. Allogrooming and parenting behaviours recruit a partially overlapping neuronal ensemble in the MPOA, are both controlled by an MPOAtoVTA pathway and are associated with dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens.
Science
fromNature
2 months ago

Daily briefing: Exercise rewires the brain for endurance, in mice

Repeated exercise sessions rewire the brain, making neurons faster to activate and enabling improved running endurance.
Science
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Bonobos can play make-believe much like children, study suggests

A bonobo named Kanzi identified the location of an imaginary liquid above chance, demonstrating understanding of pretend scenarios in controlled trials.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

What neuroscience reveals about people who cry easily and why it signals a nervous system that processes the world more deeply, not more weakly - Silicon Canals

Frequent crying reflects heightened sensory processing sensitivity and deeper cognitive processing, not emotional fragility or malfunction.
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

Tool Use By Animals: Why the Hype and Why It's So Important

Recently, two unexpected examples by a wild wolf and a domesticated cow named Veronika attracted global attention and once again opened the door for experts and others to weigh in on the question, "Are these really examples of tooling?" Many people are eager to know more about the nitty-gritty details of tooling, so I am thrilled that Dr. Benjamin Beck, an expert in this area, could answer a few questions about this fascinating behavior.
Science
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

What neuroscience reveals about people who replay conversations in their head for hours after they happen - Silicon Canals

Neuroscientists have a name for the brain network that fires up when you're not focused on an external task: the default mode network, or DMN. It's the constellation of regions - the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and angular gyrus among them - that hums to life when you daydream, reflect on yourself, or think about other people's mental states.
Psychology
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

Research suggests that people who need a full day alone after socializing aren't antisocial, their brains are processing every interaction at a level most people skip entirely - Silicon Canals

People requiring recovery after socializing possess Sensory Processing Sensitivity, a neurological trait causing deeper social information processing that demands greater cognitive resources than typical social interaction.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

How the Brain Chooses What Matters

Selective sensory prioritization can improve clarity by letting one modality dominate when multisensory integration would create competition or reduce precision.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

When Two Brains Meet

Human brains are wired to seek and reward social connection; even brief moments of joint attention and acknowledgment produce meaningful neural and psychological benefits.
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

Daily Prophets: How Your Brain Predicts the Future

I am a worrier, and have been for most of my life. At some point, someone dear and smart teased me that I worry about the wrong things. The things that hit me, she noted, were never the things I worried about. For a while that left me feeling like an incompetent worrier-until my research caught up. I realized that the things I worry about often don't end up hurting me precisely because worrying helps me diffuse them ahead of time.
Psychology
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

What neuroscience reveals about people who need to be alone after socializing - Silicon Canals

Introversion involves lower dopamine reactivity to social stimuli and higher acetylcholine activation during solitude, not a draining social battery that recharges.
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

Are Frontal Lobe Breakups Real?

There are lots of reasons why relationships fall apart; all kinds of incompatibilities can doom romance. Some are trivial, but occasionally there might be something more profound at the root of an estrangement. Recently, the concept of the "frontal lobe breakup" appeared in popular culture. The idea is that the final stage of development in the executive regions of the brain-the frontal lobes-changes someone's perspective about their relationship. The onset of advanced cognitive skills in one partner creates a gap in maturity too big to bridge.
Psychology
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