Past research has often highlighted the effects that immune activation in pregnant women can have on the development of human embryos, for instance increasing the risk of a child developing psychiatric disorders later in life. The neural mechanisms underpinning these...
Psychology & Psychiatry
Reviewing past neuroscience research that explores the neural mechanisms of aggression
Aggression is a common behavior both among humans and other animals, which is known to be particularly important for defense, protection and survival. While psychologists and neuroscientists have been investigating aggression for several decades, recent technological...
Study finds that lovers perform better than random pairs in collaborative creative tasks
Love and romantic relationships are the core inspiration for countless literary and artistic works, including poems, songs, novels and movies. Over the past few decades, some psychology researchers have conducted studies aimed at better understanding the effects that...
The importance of disseminating reliable psychology and neuroscience information during the COVID-19 pandemic
Countless individuals worldwide are currently facing consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, whether these are economic, social, practical or related to their physical and mental wellbeing. In this time marked by uncertainty, confusion and isolation, many people can...
A technique to study the behavior elicited by neuroactive and psychoactive drugs
To ensure that they prescribe useful and effective treatments to individual patients, doctors should be aware of how different drugs or therapeutic strategies influence people's behavior and neural functioning. As different drugs can have different effects on people...
How the appreciation of beauty can foster perceptual learning
"Stopping" and "seeing" are crucial components of many types of meditative practices, including Buddhist Zen meditation. In fact, these practices typically entail ceasing all activities to observe the thoughts, feelings and sensations arising at a given time, as well...
Study highlights the role of astrocytes in the formation of remote memories
Memories from a distant past, also known as remote memories, can guide the present and future behavior of humans and other living organisms on Earth. In psychology and neuroscience, the term "remote memories" refers to all memories related to events that took place...
Exploring the neural underpinnings of mind wandering
Mind wandering occurs when a person's attention shifts from things that are happening in her present environment to internal thought processes. For instance, while cooking or attending a lesson, one might start thinking about something that happened the day before or...
The role of the hippocampus in how humans mentally travel in time and space
Human and animal brains can represent events in time and space in fascinating ways, for instance, by accessing a chronology of events that happened in the past via stimuli perceived by the senses. In the human brain, spatial and temporal dimensions of events are...
The synchrony between neurons in different brain hemispheres could aid behavioral adaptation
In order to survive and thrive, humans and other living organisms must continuously acquire new strategies to adapt their behaviour to changing environments. Past studies suggest that the synchronization between different brain cells could create flexible brain states...