Anticipating temptation may improve ethical behavior, a new study finds. Honest behavior can resemble maintaining a healthy diet: awareness and advance planning help. New research suggests that recognizing an ethical conflict in advance and mentally preparing for the temptation to act dishonestly both increase the likelihood that people will choose honest actions when faced with … Read more

Summary: Researchers have made important progress in understanding parasomnias — complex sleep behaviors in which people act while partially disconnected from wakefulness. By recording brain activity during these episodes, the team showed that dreamlike experiences and apparently automatic actions can both occur during non-REM sleep, challenging the long-held view that dreaming is confined to REM … Read more

Summary: Even after clinical symptoms improve, people who have experienced recurrent depression can continue to show heightened sensitivity to punishment and negative feedback. A new study found that the habenula—a small brain region central to processing aversive signals—remains overactive in individuals with remitted depression, especially when they anticipate unpleasant outcomes. This persistent neural pattern was … Read more

Summary: The human brain encodes a detailed, mathematical and probabilistic representation of the aspects of our surroundings that it considers important. Source: UPF Barcelona How do people perceive their environment and make decisions? To interact successfully with the world, humans need more than isolated sensory evidence. Sensory information is often ambiguous and must be interpreted … Read more

Summary: Social challenges associated with autism may reflect differences that emerge mainly in pressured situations or specific interaction types. New evidence calls into question the widespread idea that autistic adults cannot accurately read others’ facial emotions. Source: Flinders University There is a widespread belief that autistic people struggle to recognise others’ emotions and lack awareness … Read more

Summary: A new study describes how odors encountered across a lifetime are encoded and reconstructed in memory. The discovery clarifies how sensory-rich episodic memories form and suggests new approaches for smell-based tests in Alzheimer’s disease detection. Source: University of Toronto Researchers at the University of Toronto have uncovered a neural mechanism that allows the brain … Read more

Summary: A twin study finds that better cardiovascular health is linked to stronger cognitive function. Source: Emory Health Sciences Emory University researchers report new evidence that maintaining good cardiovascular health supports brain health. A study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease shows that higher cardiovascular health scores are associated with better cognitive performance. The … Read more

Summary: Clozapine, an antipsychotic medication, can induce or worsen obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) in some patients. Adding aripiprazole, with or without reducing the clozapine dose, appears to be an effective management option in many cases. Source: Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics A systematic review published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics examines obsessive and compulsive symptoms associated with … Read more

Summary: New research reveals how the brain links sensory input and cognitive models when musicians coordinate with each other in live performance. Source: Max Planck Institute Performing music together presents a complex challenge for the brain: musicians must not only plan and execute the sounds from their own instrument but also continuously coordinate timing, tempo, … Read more

In a Duke-led study, monkeys learned to control two virtual arms simultaneously using only brain activity. The results, published November 6, 2013 in Science Translational Medicine, mark an important step toward brain-controlled prosthetics capable of coordinating bilateral limb movements for people with severe paralysis. To enable the animals to manipulate two virtual arms, the research … Read more