Q&A with Joseph LeDoux When asked about his career journey in cognitive neuroscience. Joseph LeDoux points to a documentary about Beatles producer George Martin. In the film, Martin says something that has always resonated with LeDoux. When asked why he thinks he was so successful in music, Martin says something like: “when I started music […]
CNS 2026 Q&A with Monica Rosenberg Monica Rosenberg has been interested in the brain-mind interface before she even knew it was possible to study it professionally. In a fourth grade science fair project, she tested the effects of aging on reaction time by having people catch a ruler dropped vertically and recording how far it […]
CNS 2026 Q&A with Samuel McDougle As a member of a Connecticut-based band, Samuel McDougle has many opportunities to display a range of motor skills on a regular basis, whether playing bluegrass fiddle, mandolin, or guitar. From his love of music has sprung a focus within cognitive neuroscience on how people learn and get better […]
CNS 2026 Q&A with Carol Barnes When Carol Barnes turned 65 years old, she had a stunning realization: that she was now the people, 65 years and older, she had been studying for the past several decades – and – that she was “OK.” Reflecting several years later on that moment, Barnes, director of the […]
CNS 2026 Q&A with Peter Hagoort From his days as an undergraduate student assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics to his work now as Director of the Institute, Peter Hagoort has come full circle in his career, seeking to unlock the mechanisms of language in the brain. For more than four decades, he […]
Just a whiff of certain smells can instantly take me back to my childhood. When I smell fresh bread or apple cake right out of the oven, for example, I remember sitting around the dinner table with my parents and sisters for the holidays. Although odors can be a powerful memory cue, they are little […]
When I was young, I remember taking apart a simple flashlight to understand how it works. It seemed to make sense that if you reduce an object down to its parts, you can then see how it all works together. But that is not always the case: some things in the world have properties that […]
As the summer lawn mowers roar outside my window, I cannot help but think about how that sound is being processed in my brain. Like many people, I think about the process as quite hierarchical – with the auditory nerve in my ear registering the sound and then deciphering the volume (it’s loud), the pitch, […]
School is almost out for summer in many places around the world, and as any parent or teacher knows, asking young kids about how their school day was, or even what they did for the summer, can be a challenge. Many children struggle to freely describe their day to day experiences, perhaps saying nothing at […]
CNS 2025 guest post by Lauren Homann (CNSTA president) As cognitive neuroscience trainees look toward the future, many are considering options beyond traditional academic pathways. With growing uncertainty around research funding, increasing academic precarity, and a shifting policy landscape, the scientific world is in flux. These challenges, while daunting, also invite a reevaluation of what […]
