Bad experiences can shape our lives in unconscious ways. If you, say, tried a new dish at a restaurant and got food poisoning, you may not only avoid that restaurant in the future but potentially that dish, even in other settings. Researchers have documented in many studies how negative emotions can shape our memories and […]
Going Off Task: Exploring Mind Wandering in the Aging Brain
We’ve all experienced it – reading some pages in a book when your mind starts to drift and then realizing that you missed a key point and have to go back and reread the same page. The experience of mind wandering appears throughout our daily lives, whether reading, driving home from work, or even when […]
What Are Memories Made Of?
CNS 2024 guest post by Julia Cardarelli Preparing to write this post about new memory research presented at CNS 2024 in Toronto required me to search my own memories for what I found most salient. A lot of my recall from the event comes down to certain factors that affect how we form memories, how […]
The BFGs of Neuroscience: Blowing Dreams into People Using VR
In the Roald Dahl book The BFG, a “Big Friendly Giant” spends his time blowing happy dreams into children that he has collected from Dream Country. In modern neuroscience labs, some researchers are now working to “blow” dreams into people, collecting them via high-tech ”Dream Country” of sorts: virtual reality (VR). They are using VR […]
Social Features Help Define How We See Everyday Actions
CNS 2024 Every day, we have an almost nonstop view of different actions unfolding around us, whether in traffic watching cars, on TV observing people interact, or at a park seeing dogs and kids playing. For scientists trying to understand how we take in such visual information, it is often easiest to isolate certain features, […]
CNS 2024: Day 4 Highlights
We closed out CNS 2024 in Toronto with another excellent poster session, followed by a whopping 6 more symposia, including on the production of language nd a special session in honor of Endel Tulving about the modern science of memory. Check out some highlights in photos and tweets below: Poster Session F: A great […]
CNS 2024: Day 3 Highlights
The third day of CNS 2024 in Toronto co included 4 symposia — on topics ranging from the neurocognitive underpinnings of meditation and mindfulness to the scientific study of subjectivity — 2 poster sessions, a DEI workshop, the Young Investigator Award lectures by Peter Kok and Ella Striem-Amit, and the Fred Kavli Distinguished Career Contributions […]
Mindfulness and Meditation: Inward Attention as a Tool for Mental Health
CNS 2024 Press Release Monday, April 15, 2024 – Toronto – From a young age, people learn the importance of paying attention to the environment around them. Less emphasized is the value of paying attention to their inner environment. Neuroscientists are increasingly studying how looking inward via mindfulness training can affect everything from depression and […]
CNS 2024: Day 2 Highlights
The second day of CNS 2024 was richly packed with 6 stimulating symposia — on topics ranging from competing neuroscientific theories of consciousness and memory engrams to the influence of dreams on cognition and multisensory development across the lifespan — two poster sessions, an NIH workshop, and the George A. Miller Prize lecture by Lynn […]
Untangling Dreams and Our Waking Lives
CNS 2024 Press Release Sunday, April 14, 2024 – Toronto – “Dreams are messages from the deep.” (Dune Part 1) Musings about dreams abound throughout society, from movies to TV to books. But despite being a constant source of fascination, the role of dreams in our lives still remains elusive. As recently noted in the […]
