justice

Using Neuroscience to Improve Justice and Outcomes for Youth

January 10, 2022

CNS 2022: Q&A with B.J. Casey Looking back on her career to date, what stands out for B.J. Casey are the tremendous strides cognitive neuroscientists have made in conducting large-scale studies that get at what is happening inside the human brain. She thinks back to early studies done with only […]

adolescent brain

From Social Media Use to Social Isolation: New Insights About the Adolescent Brain

December 13, 2021

CNS 2022: Q&A with Sarah-Jayne Blakemore Sarah-Jayne Blakemore studies topics that are on many people’s minds daily, especially those of us who are parents of teenagers: the adolescent brain. Working to understand the development of the brain in adolescents is a labor of love that began when she was studying […]

distraction

Evolving Laboratory Tasks to Resolve Distraction

November 29, 2021

CNS 2022 Q&A with John Jonides Every day, we are constantly bombarded with sights, sounds, and other stimuli that threaten to distract us from specific tasks. Over the last several decades, cognitive neuroscientists have made tremendous progress in understanding the brain processes at work when people exert cognitive control to […]

ornithology

Turning to Ornithology to Understand the Neural Basis of Expertise

October 19, 2021

Hans Op de Beeck remembers as a child being intrigued by another student in his class who excelled in all subject areas but struggled with one specific task: mentally rotating drawings in 3-D for a technical drawing class.  “He just could not do it, and hardly passed the tests despite […]

words

It’s the Quality Not Just the Quantity of Words That Counts in Aphasia

September 27, 2021

Aphasia resulting from stroke and brain injury creates a variety of language deficits, including a reduced ability to engage in conversations. And while researchers have investigated many aspects of this condition, little work has looked at the detailed characteristics of the words that aphasia patients are able to produce. In […]

film

Investigating the Adolescent Brain Through Film Watching

August 25, 2021

Adolescence provides a unique opportunity for neuroscientists to understand an important in-between step in brain development. Straddling the worlds between adulthood and childhood, adolescents often are expected to take on more responsibility and independence, yet their brains are still not fully matured. In a new study, cognitive neuroscientists sought to investigate […]

sleeping

Age-Related Differences in How the Sleeping Brain Affects Future Thinking

June 29, 2021

Researchers are in a renaissance of understanding how sleep affects health and cognition. A big shift is occurring from thinking about sleep as a reactive, or homeostatic process, to now also recognizing the prospective role of the sleeping brain. And a new study is providing further evidence about how the […]

art

Movement and Art Perception in Parkinson’s Patients

May 26, 2021

When I have taken my children to art museums in the past (pre-COVID), they loved to strike the poses they saw in the sculptures and paintings around them, mimicking the positions and actions that inspired the works. While many of us adults may not act out pieces of art, we […]

Milner

Now Playing: Special Session in Honor of Brenda Milner, a Lifetime in Brain Science

April 22, 2021

At the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s 2021 annual meeting (March 13-16, 2021), researchers honored Brenda Milner in a series of talks. Milner is a renowned neuropsychologist who has contributed significantly to the field of cognitive neuroscience, including through her work with a patient known as HM. Watch the videos here from […]

structure

Brain Structure is Key to Understanding Human Cognition

April 7, 2021

CNS 2021 Guest Post by Anne Billot In the 19th and 20th century, cases of individuals with brain injury, such as Phineas Gage or Henry Molaison, have advanced our understanding of the relationship between the anatomy of the brain and its function. Back then, methods were limited to investigate whole-brain […]

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