Humans commonly evaluate the beauty of other humans, as well as objects, places, natural landscapes, and even animals. The innate human tendency to make aesthetic judgments has been the topic of numerous psychological studies, yet its neural and cognitive...
In mammals, the perception of visual stimuli is supported by the coordinated activity of thousands of neurons in different brain regions. The images perceived by the eyes are represented in the brain, passing various steps through which representations are...
Mice are among the animal species most employed in neuroscience studies, as they are mammals (i.e., their brain is in some ways similar to the human brain) and their genetics or behaviors can be easily manipulated in experimental settings. While training mice to...
The activity of neurons in the mammalian brain has been found to be linked with various physiological processes, including the flow of blood that provides them with the energy required to function (i.e., cerebral blood flow). This close relationship between brain...
Human decision-making has been the focus of a wide range of research studies. Collectively, these research efforts could help to understand better how people make different types of everyday choices while also shedding light on the neural processes underpinning these...
Adverse early experiences, such as parental neglect, abuse, the death of a loved one, or other traumatic events, are known to influence how humans will behave as adults. For instance, studies have found that victims of childhood abuse are at a higher risk of...
When humans are completing a specific task, their minds can shift from what they are doing to their own internal thoughts. This shift of attention from a task to internal events, known as off-task thinking or mind-wandering, is well-documented and has been studied...
Past studies have consistently linked the spontaneous behaviors of mammals to variations in the activity of neurons within the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the mammalian brain. However, the complex relationships between patterns of cortical activity and...
The brains of infants and young children are in continuous and rapid development. These changes are known to go hand in hand with early life learning and the fine-tuning of mental abilities over time.
Humans and other mammals can produce a wide range of sounds, while also modulating their volume and pitch. These sounds, also known as mammalian vocalizations, play a central role in communication between both animals of the same and of different species.