Neuroscience

Familiar categories of mental functions such as perception, memory and attention reflect our experience of ourselves, but they are misleading about how the brain works. More revealing approaches are emerging.

Crows recently demonstrated an understanding of the concept of zero. It’s only the latest evidence of animals’ talents for numerical abstraction — which may still differ from our own grasp of numbers.

A temporal pattern of activity observed in human brains may explain how we can learn so quickly.

For all their triumphs, AI systems can’t seem to generalize the concepts of “same” and “different.” Without that, researchers worry, the quest to create truly intelligent machines may be hopeless.

Researchers have finally seen how some smell receptors bind to odor molecules. The work yields new insights into one of the most mysterious and versatile senses.

Studies of sleep are usually neurological. But some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved for metabolic reasons, long before brains even existed.

Eve Marder’s research into the plasticity and resilience of nervous systems finds universal principles guiding life’s responses to stress.

Advances in brain-computer interface technology are impressive, but we’re not close to anything resembling mind control.

A newfound hub of immune system activity at the back of the brain solves a century-old puzzle.