An explanation of the Dunning–Kruger effect is provided which does not require any psychological explanation, because it is derived as a statistical artifact. This is achieved by specifying a simple statistical model which explicitly takes the (random) boundary constraints into a … | Continue reading
Pilitropic and flagellotropic phages adsorb to bacterial pili and flagella. These phages have long been used to investigate multiple aspects of bacterial physiology, such as the cell cycle control in the Caulobacterales. Targeting cellular appendages for adsorption effectively co … | Continue reading
Based on the social exchange theory, the present study aimed to investigate the association between abusive leader behavior and job insecurity while considering the serial intervention of abusive peer behavior and emotional exhaustion. Abusive leader behavior triggers abusive pee … | Continue reading
IntroductionLanguage and thought are intimately related to one another, but the level or degree of connectedness between language and thought is not clear due to the fact that the influence of language over thought can be more context-specific or general enough (see Zlatev and Bl … | Continue reading
Misophonia, an extreme aversion to certain environmental sounds, is a highly prevalent yet understudied condition plaguing roughly 20% of the general population. Although neuroimaging research on misophonia is scant, recent work showing higher resting-state functional connectivit … | Continue reading
ObjectiveThis randomized single-blind controlled trial tested the hypothesis that a prototype digital therapeutic developed to provide goal-based counseling with personalized passive and active game-based sound therapy would provide superior tinnitus outcomes, and similar usabili … | Continue reading
In recent decades, the scientific study of consciousness has significantly increased our understanding of this elusive phenomenon. Yet, despite critical development in our understanding of the functional side of consciousness, we still lack a fundamental theory regarding its phen … | Continue reading
Microbiome-derived Gram-negative bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) has been shown by multiple laboratories to reside within Alzheimer's disease (AD)-affected neocortical and hippocampal neurons. LPS and other pro-inflammatory stressors strongly induce a defined set of NF-kB (p50 … | Continue reading
The creativity research community is in search of a viable cognitive measure providing support for behavioral observations that higher ideational output is often associated with higher creativity (known as the equal-odds rule). One such measure has included divergent thinking: th … | Continue reading
According to the just-world theory, people need to – or rather want to – believe that they live in a just world where they will receive what they earn and consequently earn what they receive. In the present work, we examined the influence of people’s general and personal beliefs … | Continue reading
ObjectiveFatigue is commonly thought to worsen with age, but the literature is mixed: some studies show that older individuals experience more fatigue, others report the reverse. Some inconsistencies in the literature may be related to gender differences in fatigue while others m … | Continue reading
Encephalization has long been understood to be a key adaptation in the human lineage, and over the last four million years species attributed to Australopithecus and Homo have shown demonstrable trends towards increased brain size. However, our understanding of past populations i … | Continue reading
Sufficient sleep with minimal interruption during the circadian/biological night supports daytime cognition and emotional regulation. Conversely, disrupted sleep involving significant nocturnal wakefulness leads to cognitive and behavioral dysregulation. Most studies to-date have … | Continue reading
Calibrating human population dispersals across Earth’s surface is fundamental to assessing rates and timing of anthropogenic impacts and distinguishing ecological phenomena influenced by humans from those that were not. Here, we describe the Hartley mammoth locality, which dates … | Continue reading
Controlled clinical intervention studies have demonstrated that cocoa flavanols (CF) can decrease blood pressure and arterial stiffness in healthy humans, although a large variability in the effect size across trials has been reported. In this study, we evaluated the intra- and i … | Continue reading
A modeling framework, based on the theory of signal processing, for characterizing the dynamics of systems driven by the unraveling of information is outlined, and is applied to describe the process of decision making. The model input of this approach is the specification of the … | Continue reading
BackgroundTo evaluate the electroretinogram waveform in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using a discrete wavelet transform (DWT) approach.MethodsA total of 55 ASD, 15 ADHD and 156 control individuals took part in this study. Full … | Continue reading
Telomerase activity is essential for the self-renewal and potential of embryonic, induced pluripotent, and cancer stem cells, as well as a few somatic stem cells, such as human urine-derived stem cells (USCs). However, it remains unclear how telomerase activity affects the regene … | Continue reading
In a post-industrial whaling world, flagship and charismatic baleen whale species are indicators of the health of our oceans. However, traditional monitoring methods provide spatially and temporally undersampled data to evaluate and mitigate the impacts of increasing climatic and … | Continue reading
IntroductionCOVID-19 might affect the incidence of specific neurological diseases, but it is unknown if this differs from the risk following other infections. Here, we characterized the frequency of neurodegenerative, cerebrovascular, and immune-mediated neurological diseases aft … | Continue reading
The potency and potential of digital media to contribute to democracy has recently come under intense scrutiny. In the context of rising populism, extremism, digital surveillance and manipulation of data, there has been a shift towards more critical approaches to digital media in … | Continue reading
Artificial Intelligence: Does Consciousness Matter?Consciousness plays an important role in debates around the mind-body problem, the controversy over strong versus weak artificial intelligence (AI), and bioethics. Strikingly, however, it is not prominent in current debates on et … | Continue reading
A financial confidence game (or “con”) aims to separate you from your money. An epistemic con aims to influence social policy by recruiting you to spread doubt and falsehood about well-established claims. You can’t be conned if you close your wallet to financial cons and your min … | Continue reading
This article addresses the question of whether machine understanding requires consciousness. Some researchers in the field of machine understanding have argued that it is not necessary for computers to be conscious as long as they can match or exceed human performance in certain … | Continue reading
We introduce Equilibrium Propagation, a learning framework for energy-based models. It involves only one kind of neural computation, performed in both the first phase (when the prediction is made) and the second phase of training (after the target or prediction error is revealed) … | Continue reading
Some static patterns evoke the perception of an illusory expanding central region or “hole.” We asked observers to rate the magnitudes of illusory motion or expansion of black holes, and these predicted the degree of dilation of the pupil, measured with an eye tracker. In contras … | Continue reading
Background: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) mainly colonizes nasopharynx. In upper airways acute infections, e.g., the common cold, saline nasal irrigations have a significant efficacy in reducing symptoms. The present study aimed to test the efficacy … | Continue reading
Until recently, human behavioral data from reading has mainly been of interest to researchers to understand human cognition. However, these human language processing signals can also be beneficial in machine learning-based natural language processing tasks. Using EEG brain activi … | Continue reading
A key challenge for AI is to build embodied systems that operate in dynamically changing environments. Such systems must adapt to changing task contexts and learn continuously. Although standard deep learning systems achieve state of the art results on static benchmarks, they oft … | Continue reading
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by problems with social-communication, restricted interests and repetitive behavior. A recent and thought-provoking article presented a normative explanation for the perceptual symptoms of autism in terms of a failure of Bayes … | Continue reading
Despite the compelling subjective experience of executive self-control, we argue that “consciousness” contains no top-down control processes and that “consciousness” involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conven … | Continue reading
The aim of this review is to evaluate the placebo effect in the treatment of anxiety and depression. Antidepressants are supposed to work by fixing a chemical imbalance, specifically, a lack of serotonin or norepinephrine in the brain. However, analyses of the published and the u … | Continue reading
Synthetic biology and bioengineering provide the opportunity to create novel embodied cognitive systems (otherwise known as minds) in a very wide variety of chimeric architectures combining evolved and designed material and software. These advances are disrupting familiar concept … | Continue reading
Narrative fictions have surely become the single most widespread source of entertainment in the world. In their free time, humans read novels and comics, watch movies and TV series, and play video games: they consume stories that they know to be false. Such behaviors are expandin … | Continue reading
BackgroundTinnitus is a prevalent condition (>10% of the population) affecting the quality of life of 0.5–3% of the population. Although several treatments have been proposed, most of these lack evidence of efficacy in the treatment of chronic tinnitus. Thus, we aimed to evaluate … | Continue reading
The neurophysiological footprint of brain activity after cardiac arrest and during near-death experience (NDE) is not well understood. Although a hypoactive state of brain activity has been assumed, experimental animal studies have shown increased activity after cardiac arrest, p … | Continue reading
Among numerous point mutation differences between the SARS-CoV-2 and the bat RaTG13 coronavirus, only the 12-nucleotide furin cleavage site (FCS) exceeds 3 nucleotides. A BLAST search revealed that a 19 nucleotide portion of the SARS.Cov2 genome encompassing the furing cleavage s … | Continue reading
Since the beginning of information processing by electronic components, the nervous system has served as a metaphor for the organization of computational primitives. Brain-inspired computing today encompasses a class of approaches ranging from using novel nano-devices for computa … | Continue reading
BackgroundIn the absence of antiviral alternatives, interventions under research for COVID-19 might be offered following guidelines from WHO for monitored emergency use of unregistered and experimental interventions (MEURI). Ivermectin is among several drugs explored for its role … | Continue reading
BackgroundThe clinical benefits of omega-3 fatty acids (FAs) supplementation in preventing and treating coronary heart disease (CHD) remain controversial. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the clinical benefits of omega-3 FA supplementation, with special attention given … | Continue reading
An advantage of blockchain protocols is that a decentralized community of users may each update and maintain a public ledger without the need for a trusted third party. Such modifications introduce important economic and ethical considerations that we believe have not been consid … | Continue reading
Humans undergo extreme physiological changes when subjected to long periods of weightlessness, and as we continue to become a space-faring species, it is imperative that we fully understand the physiological changes that occur in the human body, including the brain. In this study … | Continue reading
It is commonly assumed that usage of the word “computer” in the brain sciences reflects a metaphor. However, there is no single definition of the word “computer” in use. In fact, based on the usage of the word “computer” in computer science, a computer is merely some physical mac … | Continue reading
The present study investigated the relationship between self-efficacy, flow, positive- and negative affect, worry and ski jumping performance, as well as the degree of influence these psychological factors have on ski jumping performance in specific competitions and overall World … | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence has made tremendous advances since its inception about seventy years ago. Self-driving cars, programs beating experts at complex games, and smart robots capable of assisting people that need care are just some among the successful examples of machine intel … | Continue reading
Background: Generally, food intake occurs in a three-meal per 24 h fashion with in-between meal snacking. As such, most humans spend more than ∼ 12–16 h per day in the postprandial state. It may be reasoned from an evolutionary point of view, that the human body is physiologicall … | Continue reading
Past acid-sulfate hydrothermal systems on Mars have promise in their ability to have hosted life for billions of years. One method for analyzing these systems is to study analog environments on Earth. To assess the astrobiological potential of Martian acid-sulfate hydrothermal sy … | Continue reading
One of the most universally accepted facts about autism is that it is heterogenous. Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder have a wide range of behavioral presentations and a variety of co-occurring medical and mental health conditions. The identification of more hom … | Continue reading