“There are all these YouTube videos from pet owners that say their animals love to do this.” That’s how neuroscientist Michael Brecht of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of Humboldt in Berlin got the idea of teaching rats to play hide and seek. See how this both absurd and fascinating study managed to shed light on rats’ cognitive abilities.

To accomplish their goal of studying the behavior of these rodents while at play, the research team transformed their laboratory into a playground. In the first case, a member of the team placed a rat in a closed box and hid. The scientist then opened the box using a remote control… and ...

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Why did the smartphone need glasses? Because it lost all of its contacts! [laughter…?]. This is one of 40 jokes of its kind used in a study on the effectiveness of canned laughter. You may not have found the joke made earlier very funny, but you might have laughed at it anyway had it been followed by recorded laughter. Read on for the results of this more-serious-than-it-seems research on humor sensitivity, particularly in autistics.

As the study’s authors point out, recorded laughter (live or pre-recorded) was introduced to remind listeners and viewers that they were watching humorous programming and to make them feel like they were part of the audience. Are you ...

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Tea or coffee? According to this article, we should probably be switching to tea… The present study conducted by Chinese and British researchers uses brain imaging data for the first time to explore the effects of tea on the brain, particularly on the connections between brain regions. Is drinking tea regularly beneficial for cognition?

As the authors point out in the preamble of their article (published in the journal Aging), previous studies have already highlighted the fact that tea consumption could be beneficial for health, including improving mood, preventing cardiovascular disease, and reducing the risks of cognitive decline. The virtues of tea stem primarily from its ...

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Traditionally, student knowledge has been evaluated using written or oral exams. But imagine if teachers could use another measure to determine to what extent a student understands the concept they’re teaching. How might that be possible? By observing students’ brain activity, and giving them a “neural score,” the study we’re about to explore promises to revolutionize the way we teach.

Researchers at Dartmouth College and Harvard University started from a simple assumption: when an individual acquires new knowledge, it has to be represented somewhere in the brain. If this is the case, these representations should be illustrated through new patterns of brain activity. The ...

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Between classes, exams and the stresses of everyday life (bills, shopping, cleaning…), going to school can be very stressful. In the United States, a unique approach to stress prevention has been warmly accepted: inviting students to pet animals. A recent study from the University of Washington has highlighted some promising results.

During past decade, American students have reported increasing levels of stress. Implemented in almost 1,000 university campuses to date, the “Pet your stress away” campaign offers students the chance to pet dogs and cats for 5 to 45 minutes in small groups. While the program’s soothing effects have already been noted in previous research, ...

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It’s a fact: spending time in nature is beneficial to both our physical and psychological health. But is there a minimum threshold for obtaining a significant positive effect? This was the question raised by a team of researchers from the University of Exeter (England). Through their very large-scale study, they were able to determine the “minimum weekly dose of nature” we should all be taking.

Many studies report improvement in health and well-being when we spend time in natural environments (forests, parks, beaches, etc.). Although evidence varies (in quantity and quality) depending on the research, living in “greener” urban areas is regularly associated with a lower ...

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Another study on crows! It’s true, these birds never cease to fascinate scientists. In this latest episode, you’ll discover how researchers tested a psychological phenomenon known as “emotional contagion” in these birds. Here’s the question they wanted to answer: can crows transmit a bad mood ?

In cognitive science, a person’s ability to attribute mental states (emotions, intentions, desire…) to others or to themselves is known as “theory of mind.” This human ability makes our social relationships more effective. For example, we can quickly detect sadness in another individual simply through their facial expressions. Moreover, one person’s emotions can be quickly ...

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Fifteen years before his hit movie Sink or Swim, Gilles Lelouche co-directed his first feature film: Narco. In this comedy, Guillaume Canet plays a character suffering from narcolepsy, which at first glance appears to be a handicap. But the young man comes to realize that the condition also gives him an incredibly vivid imagination that turns his dreams into story books. In line with this scenario, a study recently carried out on narcoleptic subjects suggests a link between sleep and creative abilities.

Few studies have attempted to unravel the mystery of sleep as a “creative muse,” though some have shown the role of REM sleep in creativity. This sleep phase could ...

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It’s summer and temperatures are on the rise. Sometimes the heat makes us feel less “productive,” or like we’re moving in “slow motion.” A German-American study recently looked at the effects of temperature variation on cognitive performance in men and women. Who performs better when the mercury climbs above 90°?

As Tom Y. Chang (a researcher at the Marshall School of Business) and Agne Kajackaite (researcher at the Berlin Social Center) point out, while there’s much debate about whether or not women prefer higher indoor temperatures, until now, no one had explored the link between temperature variation and cognitive performance in the two sexes. The researchers ...

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You’re walking down the street and find a lost wallet. What do you do? Researchers decided to voluntarily create this situation in different cities throughout 40 countries. In addition to finding out that reactions varied between different populations, the goal was to see whether the psychological burden of seeing oneself as a thief had an influence on behavior. Can this burden outweigh economic benefits?

The research team composed of A. Cohn (University of Michigan), D. Tannenbaum (University of Utah), and C. Lukas Zünd and M.A. Maréchal (University of Zurich) wanted to test people’s honesty in a more realistic environment rather than a laboratory setting. Laboratory ...

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While the Louvre Museum in Paris prepares to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the genius of this artist who produced some of the greatest masterpieces of all time remains somewhat of a mystery. A recent study published in the journal Brain puts forth a new hypothesis to explain his incredible creativity and multitude of unfinished projects: did Leonardo da Vinci have an attention disorder and ADHD?

Painter, sculptor, musician, architect, geologist, mathematician, anatomist, botanist, philosopher… Reading this (non-exhaustive) list, one may wonder how this Florentine, revered by popes and kings alike, managed to excel in so many domains. Marco ...

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Remembering an email address long enough to write it down, following a conversation, or remembering the beginning of a sentence you’ve just read. Working memory makes these tasks possible. A recent study conducted by a team of psychologists has shed light on strong connections between working memory and sleep, mood, and age. What are the effects of these three factors on working memory?

A component of short term memory, working memory is used to store, temporarily maintain, and manipulate useful information for performing cognitive tasks, such as reasoning and comprehension. It plays a crucial role in many cognitive functions (language, action planning, etc.). Research has ...

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Michael is shorter than Daniel and Daniel is shorter than Jennifer, so Michael is shorter than Jennifer. From 4-5 years of age, children are able to reach this conclusion through something known as transitive inference. This logical reasoning has also been demonstrated in vertebrate animals (monkeys, rats, birds, and fish). For the first time, a study has shed light on this capacity for deduction in an invertebrate: the paper wasp. Here’s how...

As the authors of this research point out, animal species that show complex social behavior seem to be the most likely to develop transitive inference. In invertebrates, the skill has already been studied unsuccessfully in honeybees. ...

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You're undoubtedly familiar with the late astrophysicist, Stephen Hawking. While his condition left him unable to speak, he could communicate through a device, using eye and facial movements to compose each word, letter by letter. New research is allowing faster speech synthesis technology to be developed that more closely simulates the natural flow of speech. So how does this “brain decoder” work?

Though we’re largely unaware of it, speaking requires very precise, multidimensional coordination and control of the vocal tract’s articulatory muscles, which extend from the glottis to lips. The process of speaking is based on a set of complex, simultaneous, and fluid movements ...

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A scientific study on Pokémon? You're not the only one to be skeptical of the idea. Project initiator Jesse Gomez also had trouble convincing his colleagues. According to the neuroanatomist, there may be an area of the brain specifically designed to recognize hundreds of Pokémon characters. See how this unusual research can teach us more about the way our visual cortex works.

Pokémon video games have known unwavering success since the late 90s, and they’re still very popular today. The study’s lead author, Jesse Gomez, is himself a big fan: “I played it nonstop starting around age 6 or 7. I kept playing throughout my childhood. What was unique about Pokémon is that ...

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