Cognitive Science bridges the gap between the brain and the mind - tracing how networks of neurons shape perception, attention, memory, and imagination. This section explores the science of thinking and awareness, from the role of the default mode network in creativity to the mechanisms of focus, flow, and altered states. By bringing together neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, we highlight the discoveries that reveal not only how the mind works, but how it can be expanded.
The line between imagination and perception may be thinner than we think. A groundbreaking review in Schizophrenia Bulletin compares the visual hallucinations of psychedelic experience with those in Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia, uncovering a shared biological code. Both involve a fragile dance between sensory silence and cortical overactivity - a brain filling in the world when perception fades. At the intersection of serotonin, vision, and meaning, we begin to glimpse consciousness not as a passive recording, but as a creative act.
Elephants live as if time itself has slowed to match their memory. They mourn their dead, lead their families across generations, and rarely fall to the illnesses that ravage shorter-lived mammals. Now, scientists are discovering that elephants' biological resilience mirrors their emotional depth. With twenty copies of the TP53 "guardian" gene - far more than any other mammal - they repair cellular damage before it accumulates. But their real secret may lie in how they live: within bonds of memory, care, and shared knowledge. Together, these clues suggest that aging may be less about decay than about the architecture of connection.
Humans are remarkably good at spotting people around us, but our brains aren't perfect counters. New research shows that when we feel an invisible "presence" nearby - a hallucination triggered experimentally with robotics and virtual reality - our brains actually overestimate how many people we see. The effect traces back to extrastriate brain regions that fuse body perception with social awareness, hinting at how our sense of presence, paranoia, or even ghostly encounters might be built into our neural wiring.
Even after surgery, many women with carpal tunnel syndrome are left with burning, persistent pain. A new brain-imaging study shows it's not just the wrist that's to blame - maladaptive patterns in the prefrontal cortex and limbic system may keep the pain alive long after the nerve is released.
Aging reshapes the brain's wiring. New research shows that high-resolution scans reveal white matter changes that help explain why fluid cognition declines with age.
Paranoia is not only about mistrust - it may be about feeling unsafe in a world of fragile connections. A new open-access study in Schizophrenia Bulletin Open shows that social rejection sits at the center of paranoid thinking, creating a feedback loop that intensifies negative emotions and self-image. Using a weeklong smartphone-based sampling and advanced temporal network modeling, researchers found that paranoia both predicts and is predicted by rejection, underscoring the importance of early interventions that break this cycle
When we talk about our fears, are we also revealing how our brain works? A new study from the National Institute of Mental Health suggests the answer is yes. Using movies to induce anxiety in children and adolescents, researchers combined brain scans with natural language processing (NLP) of participants' verbal recall. They found that patterns of brain activity - particularly in the anterior insula - were directly linked to the way anxious youth described the experience. The results mark the first time NLP has been used to connect subjective reports of anxiety with real-time brain function in a clinical sample.
Loneliness is more than a feeling - it is a major health risk, linked to higher rates of dementia, depression, and premature death. Now, two new randomized controlled trials show that an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program can significantly reduce loneliness in older adults, with benefits lasting for months. The findings, published in The Journals of Gerontology, suggest that mindfulness and even general health-enhancement programs offer practical tools to address what the U.S. Surgeon General recently called a public health epidemic
Is consciousness born in the back of the brain, where sensory signals first converge - or in the front, where thought, memory, and decisions take shape? A new open-access study in Neuroscience of Consciousness finds evidence for both views. Using advanced computational modeling of EEG data, researchers show that awareness depends on feedback loops spanning both sensory and frontal cortices, with only a slight edge for frontal involvement.
