All posts tagged: Cognitive Science

Every breath you take, every distinct pattern in the brain you make

Every breath you take, every distinct pattern in the brain you make

Published by Jenni Sidey

The brain appears to track the detailed shape of individual breaths, not just the overall rhythm of breathing. Invasive recordings from 16 people found that changes in nasal airflow were linked to matching changes in neural activity across several brain regions. The findings could open new ways to study breathing, cognition and conditions such as sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, although the research does not yet provide a predictive test. Breathing may feel like one of the body’s most automatic routines, but no two breaths are quite the same. One inhale may arrive quickly, another slowly. An exhale can stretch out, stop briefly or carry a different amount of air than the breath before it. The brain appears to notice those differences. A study led by researchers at the University of California San Diego found that the detailed shape of individual breaths corresponds with the shape of neural activity recorded across parts of the human brain. Rather than responding only to breathing as a repeating rhythm, the brain appears to track changes from one breath …

AI Is Helping Solve the Intricate Genetic Puzzle of Schizophrenia

AI Is Helping Solve the Intricate Genetic Puzzle of Schizophrenia

Published by skeptic

One of the greatest challenges in modern genetics is schizophrenia. Unlike diseases caused by a single mutation, this disorder appears to arise from a combination of hundreds of genetic variants, each with small effects on different brain processes. Some influence neural development, while others alter communication between neurons or the organization of brain connections. Together, they contribute to the risk of developing the disease. Understanding this complex genetic architecture requires more than just identifying a single root cause of the problem. Scientists also need to understand how genes interact with one another and whether they form biological networks capable of amplifying the risk. To answer that question, they must use AI-based computational models to reconstruct the coordinated activity of thousands of genes within the human brain. Now, a study published in Nature Genetics provides one of the most detailed pictures to date. The team identified 766 genes associated with schizophrenia, including 641 that had not appeared in previous transcriptomic analyses. Many of these genes were identified thanks to long-range genetic regulatory signals—evidence that reinforces the …

Eating one egg a day linked to lower Alzheimer’s risk in older adults

Eating one egg a day linked to lower Alzheimer’s risk in older adults

Published by Jenni Sidey

Eggs have spent years in nutrition debates, praised for protein one moment and questioned for cholesterol the next. Now a large long-running study suggests they may also be tied to something else: a lower chance of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease later in life. Researchers at Loma Linda University Health found that adults 65 and older who ate eggs were less likely to receive an Alzheimer’s diagnosis than those who rarely or never ate them. The pattern held even after the team adjusted for diet, lifestyle, and a long list of health conditions. “Compared to never eating eggs, eating at least five eggs per week can decrease risk of Alzheimer’s,” said Joan Sabaté, MD, DrPH, a professor at Loma Linda University School of Public Health and the study’s principal investigator. The analysis drew on 39,498 participants from the Adventist Health Study-2 cohort who were linked with Medicare records between 2008 and 2020. Over an average follow-up of 15.3 years, 2,858 participants were clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. That scale matters. So does the group itself. …

New research finds clear link between smoking and dementia

New research finds clear link between smoking and dementia

Published by Jenni Sidey

The damage from smoking has long been traced through the lungs, heart, and blood vessels. But another pathway may be helping drive harm much farther up the body, into the brain. A new study from the University of Chicago points to a previously unmapped line of communication between the lungs and the nervous system. This line begins with rare airway cells and ends with changes tied to neurodegeneration. The study, published in Science Advances, suggests nicotine can push specialized lung cells to send out tiny biological packets that disrupt iron balance in nearby neurons. This sets off stress inside the cells and triggers warning signs often linked to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. “This research establishes a clear ‘lung-brain’ axis that helps explain why cigarette smoking is linked to cognitive decline and neurodegenerative risks,” said UChicago postdoctoral researcher Kui Zhang, co-first author of the new work. “By understanding how these exosomes perturb iron homeostasis, we open new doors for protecting neurons from smoke-induced damage.” That matters because smoking’s connection to dementia has been hard …

AI struggles with true creativity compared to humans, study finds

AI struggles with true creativity compared to humans, study finds

Published by Jenni Sidey

A page filled with abstract shapes can spark wildly different ideas depending on who is looking at it. For one person, a curve becomes a bird in flight. Another person sees it turn into something mechanical. For a generative AI system, that same shape may lead nowhere at all. That contrast sits at the center of a new study examining whether artificial intelligence can truly be creative, or whether it only appears that way. The research, led by scientists at the University of Barcelona and published in the journal Advanced Science, didn’t test whether AI could generate a convincing painting or mimic a famous style. It asked something harder: can AI produce genuinely original visual ideas on its own, without being told what to think? The short answer is no. Not yet. Not even close. From left to right, Silvia Rondini, Xim Cerdá-Company, Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells, Claudia Álvarez, Olivier Penacchio and Dan Dediu. (CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA What the Study Actually Tested The team used a standardized tool called the Test of Creative Imagery Abilities, which …

Nearly half of older adults improve in cognition or walking over time

Nearly half of older adults improve in cognition or walking over time

Published by Jenni Sidey

A steady slide into frailty is the story many people tell themselves about old age. The numbers in a long-running federal survey tell a messier tale. In a new study led by Becca R. Levy at Yale University, nearly half of older adults tracked for up to 12 years improved in at least one basic marker of brain or body function. The odds of improvement rose with something that rarely gets treated like a health factor at all: whether someone started out with more positive beliefs about aging. “Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” Levy said. “What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process.” When the average hides the people Levy, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Yale School of Public Health, and co-author Martin Slade, a lecturer in occupational medicine at Yale School of Medicine and in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the …

The long-term effects of repeated head trauma in football

The long-term effects of repeated head trauma in football

Published by Jenni Sidey

Scores on a memory test dropped as football experience rose, and the pattern held across thousands of former players. This trend was the focus of a large analysis of retired American football players aged 40 and older. Researchers compared men who played the sport with a control group that reported no prior history of repeated head trauma due to contact sports. Additionally, the control group reported no head trauma from military service or substance abuse. Overall, men who played football had poorer scores on memory tests and reported more cognitive problems. In addition, participants in the football group with longer careers and higher levels of competition experienced poorer cognitive performance than their peers. The current study uses data from the Head Impact & Trauma Surveillance Study, or HITSS. This is a nationwide study within the Brain Health Registry at the University of California, San Francisco. It has more than 100,000 participants. These participants will be followed into the future. Participants in HITSS completed a 90-minute battery of online questionnaires and cognitive assessments. (CREDIT: Shutterstock) Participants …

‘Gatekeeper’ lining brain cells may guard against Alzheimer’s disease

‘Gatekeeper’ lining brain cells may guard against Alzheimer’s disease

Published by Jenni Sidey

Neurons never sit still for long. Receptors move in and out of the cell surface. Signals surge, fade, then surge again. Beneath that activity, a fine lattice made of actin and spectrin quietly lines the inner membrane. In a new study, researchers used super-resolution imaging to watch how that lattice, known as the membrane-associated periodic skeleton, or MPS, shapes what enters a neuron and what stays out. Their findings suggest the MPS does more than hold structure. It acts as a physical barrier that regulates endocytosis, the process cells use to pull material inside. The team visualized four major endocytic pathways in mature neurons: clathrin-mediated endocytosis, caveolin-mediated endocytosis, flotillin-mediated endocytosis, and fast endophilin-mediated endocytosis. Using structured illumination microscopy and 3D STORM imaging, they mapped where these pathways operate across axons, dendrites, and the axon initial segment. Ruobo Zhou, assistant professor of chemistry, of biochemistry and molecular biology, and of biomedical engineering, on left, co-led the study with Jinyu Fei, a graduate student in the chemistry department in Penn State’s Eberly College of Science. (CREDIT: Jaydyn …

New study challenges claim that AI can think like a human

New study challenges claim that AI can think like a human

Published by Jenni Sidey

For decades, psychologists have argued over a basic question. Can one grand theory explain the human mind, or do attention, memory, and decision-making each require their own models? That debate took a sharp turn in July 2025 when Nature published a high-profile study describing an artificial intelligence model called Centaur. Built by fine-tuning a large language model on psychological experiment data, Centaur was reported to predict human behavior across 160 cognitive tasks. The tasks spanned decision-making, executive control, and other areas. The results drew notice because they hinted at something bold: a single model that could simulate many aspects of human thought. But that claim has now met resistance. Researchers at Zhejiang University have published a critique in National Science Open arguing that Centaur’s performance may not reflect real understanding. Instead, they say, the model likely overfit the data. In plain terms, it may have learned answer patterns rather than grasping what the tasks required. Illustration of conditions. The model input comprises a task instruction and a procedure text. The task instruction includes a description …

2-3 cups of coffee a day can lower dementia risk and slow cognitive decline

2-3 cups of coffee a day can lower dementia risk and slow cognitive decline

Published by Jenni Sidey

Morning routines can add up over decades. A new study suggests your daily coffee or tea habit may also connect to how well your brain holds up with age. “When searching for possible dementia prevention tools, we thought something as prevalent as coffee may be a promising dietary intervention — and our unique access to high-quality data through studies that have been going on for more than 40 years allowed us to follow through on that idea,” said senior author Daniel Wang, an associate scientist with the Channing Division of Network Medicine in the Mass General Brigham Department of Medicine and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Daniel Wang, an associate scientist with the Channing Division of Network Medicine in the Mass General Brigham Department of Medicine and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. (CREDIT: Harvard Medical School) “While our results are encouraging, it’s important to remember that the effect size is small and there are lots of important ways to protect cognitive function as we age. Our study suggests that caffeinated coffee …