CNS 2024 Q&A with Ella Striem-Amit For the last two decades, Ella Striem-Amit has been searching for answers to some of neuroscience’s deepest questions: How does the human brain develop in individuals and what happens when something is missing? Working with people born without hands, sight, or hearing has given her and her team new […]
Great Expectations: How Our Prior Experiences Shape Our Reality
CNS 2024 Q&A with Peter Kok From daily illusions like seeing animal shapes in clouds or mistaking a curtain for a person in a dark bedroom to more complex ones, like the “hollow mask illusion,” (screenshot at right/above) our prior experiences and expectations shape how we perceive the world around us, sometimes in unexpected ways. […]
Watching a Memory Unfold
CNS 2024 Q&A with Sheena Josselyn For the past few decades, Sheena Josselyn has had a ringside seat to some remarkable technological advancements that have enabled scientists to study memories in ways once only imaginable through science fiction. Viral vectors, optogenetics, and live imaging have all enabled neuroscientists like Josselyn to explore how cells activate […]
Bringing New Focus to the Mind
CNS 2024 Q&A with Kia Nobre For Kia Nobre, the drive toward science is instinctive. For as long as she can remember, she has been curious about the world around her. “I like to think that all humans start out that way, curious, perplexed even,” says Nobre of Yale University. “I don’t understand why or […]
Mapping Paths to Understand the Hippocampus
Q&A with Lynn Nadel Over the last several decades, research led by cognitive neuroscientists has led to new understanding of the hippocampus and its core role in human memory. “The attention the hippocampus has received, and the progress that has been made in understanding it, has been nothing short of astounding in the 50+ years […]
Training Your Attention on Unwanted Thoughts to Remove Them
Zulkayda Mamat has always been interested in the interplay between memory and trauma. Ethnically Uyghur, Mamat left China when she was 12 years old, becoming part of the diaspora community. She has borne witness to the mass trauma experienced by the Uyghurs, at least a million of whom, by many estimates, have been detained in […]
When Our Brains Trick Us with a False Memory
When I was very young, my family visited Disney World, and for years after, I had a fairly vivid memory of the Dumbo ride: the elephants spun around vertically like a Ferris wheel. When I returned there decades later as an adult with my own family, I was stunned to see that the elephants spin […]
Exploring Coincidences: When We Find Meaning in Random Patterns
As a master’s student studying paranormal beliefs and parapsychology some 15 years ago, Christian Rominger stumbled upon a paper by Paola Bressan about “meaningful coincidences” and why they might happen. “What really caught my attention about meaningful coincidences is that they’re different from other paranormal ideas and phenomena. They’re tied closely to our behaviors and […]
Using Virtual Reality to Explore the Neuroscience of Out-of-Body Experiences
When I was young, I remember first hearing the phrase “out-of-body experience” in reference to the Shirley Maclaine TV series “Out on a Limb.” At the time, I remember thinking of it as a mystical, mysterious state. Now, researchers know these experiences can happen through meditation, sensory deprivation, or when hearing death, but little is […]
What Do Math Skills Look Like in the Brain?
School’s out for summer – at least in most places in the Northern Hemisphere. That means most kids will not be giving a lot of thought to math for a couple months, but for some cognitive neuroscientists, math will continue to be an important area of study. Cognitive scientists have long been interested in the […]
