{"title":"We need to fight for the next generation of US researchers","authors":"Nicole C. Rust","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02246-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02246-x","url":null,"abstract":"Federal funding of science has been cut, and trainee scientists in the USA face an unstable and uncertain future. Nicole Rust explains how and why we should act to support junior US researchers at this time.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"522 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144237985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Runnan Cao, Jinge Wang, Chujun Lin, Emanuela De Falco, Alina Peter, Hernan G. Rey, Peter Brunner, Jon T. Willie, James J. DiCarlo, Alexander Todorov, Ueli Rutishauser, Xin Li, Nicholas J. Brandmeir, Shuo Wang
{"title":"Feature-based encoding of face identity by single neurons in the human amygdala and hippocampus","authors":"Runnan Cao, Jinge Wang, Chujun Lin, Emanuela De Falco, Alina Peter, Hernan G. Rey, Peter Brunner, Jon T. Willie, James J. DiCarlo, Alexander Todorov, Ueli Rutishauser, Xin Li, Nicholas J. Brandmeir, Shuo Wang","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02218-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02218-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Neurons in the human amygdala and hippocampus are classically thought to encode a person’s identity invariant to visual features. However, it remains largely unknown how visual information from higher visual cortical areas is translated into such a semantic representation of an individual person. Here, across four experiments (3,581 neurons from 19 neurosurgical patients over 111 sessions), we demonstrate a region-based feature code for faces, where neurons encode faces on the basis of shared visual features rather than associations of known concepts, contrary to prevailing views. Feature neurons encode groups of faces regardless of their identity, broad semantic categories or familiarity; and the coding regions (that is, receptive fields) predict feature neurons’ response to new face stimuli. Together, our results reveal a new class of neurons that bridge perception-driven representation of facial features with mnemonic semantic representations, which may form the basis for declarative memory.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144228617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zejin Lu, Adrien Doerig, Victoria Bosch, Bas Krahmer, Daniel Kaiser, Radoslaw M. Cichy, Tim C. Kietzmann
{"title":"End-to-end topographic networks as models of cortical map formation and human visual behaviour","authors":"Zejin Lu, Adrien Doerig, Victoria Bosch, Bas Krahmer, Daniel Kaiser, Radoslaw M. Cichy, Tim C. Kietzmann","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02220-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02220-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A prominent feature of the primate visual system is its topographic organization. For understanding its origins, its computational role and its behavioural implications, computational models are of central importance. Yet, vision is commonly modelled using convolutional neural networks, which are hard-wired to learn identical features across space and thus lack topography. Here we overcome this limitation by introducing all-topographic neural networks (All-TNNs). All-TNNs develop several features reminiscent of primate topography, including smooth orientation and category selectivity maps, and enhanced processing of regions with task-relevant information. In addition, All-TNNs operate on a low energy budget, suggesting a metabolic benefit of smooth topographic organization. To test our model against behaviour, we collected a dataset of human spatial biases in object recognition and found that All-TNNs significantly outperform control models. All-TNNs thereby offer a promising candidate for modelling primate visual topography and its role in downstream behaviour.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144228621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Protracted development of gaze behaviour","authors":"Marcel Linka, Harun Karimpur, Benjamin de Haas","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02191-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02191-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>How does scene viewing develop? Previous evidence is limited and suggests that viewing behaviour may be adult-like from about eight years old. Here we present data from <i>n</i> = 6,720 participants from 5 to 72 years old, freely viewing 40 natural scenes. We found that the development of scene viewing is surprisingly protracted. Semantic salience for social features continuously changes until adolescence, and text salience increases over the first two decades of life. Basic oculomotor biases towards the image centre and along the horizontal meridian develop until adolescence, matching developmental changes in visual sensitivity and cortex. Finally, while the tendency for visual exploration continuously increases, fixation patterns become less idiosyncratic and more canonical throughout adolescence. These findings show that fundamental aspects of adult gaze take up to two decades of continuous development and push individuals towards more canonical viewing patterns. We suggest that development is key to understanding the general mechanisms of active vision.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144218827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Majority support for global redistributive and climate policies","authors":"Adrien Fabre, Thomas Douenne, Linus Mattauch","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02175-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02175-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We document majority support for policies entailing global redistribution and climate mitigation. Surveys on 40,680 respondents in 20 countries show strong majority support for a global carbon price funding equal cash transfers, called the Global Climate Scheme (GCS). Through our surveys on 8,000 respondents in the USA, France, Germany, Spain and the UK, we test several hypotheses that could reconcile strong stated support with scarce occurrences in public debates. Three quarters of Europeans and half of Americans support the GCS, even as they understand its cost to them. Using several experiments, we show that the support for the GCS is sincere and that political programmes that include it are preferred to programmes that do not. We document widespread support for other globally redistributive policies, such as increased foreign aid or a wealth tax funding low-income countries. In sum, global policies are genuinely supported by majorities, even in wealthy, contributing countries.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144218831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Qihui Xu, Yingying Peng, Samuel A. Nastase, Martin Chodorow, Minghua Wu, Ping Li
{"title":"Large language models without grounding recover non-sensorimotor but not sensorimotor features of human concepts","authors":"Qihui Xu, Yingying Peng, Samuel A. Nastase, Martin Chodorow, Minghua Wu, Ping Li","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02203-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02203-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>To what extent can language give rise to complex conceptual representation? Is multisensory experience essential? Recent large language models (LLMs) challenge the necessity of grounding for concept formation: whether LLMs without grounding nevertheless exhibit human-like representations. Here we compare multidimensional representations of ~4,442 lexical concepts between humans (the Glasgow Norms<sup>1</sup>, <i>N</i> = 829; and the Lancaster Norms<sup>2</sup>, <i>N</i> = 3,500) and state-of-the-art LLMs with and without visual learning, across non-sensorimotor, sensory and motor domains. We found that (1) the similarity between model and human representations decreases from non-sensorimotor to sensory domains and is minimal in motor domains, indicating a systematic divergence, and (2) models with visual learning exhibit enhanced similarity with human representations in visual-related dimensions. These results highlight the potential limitations of language in isolation for LLMs and that the integration of diverse modalities can potentially enhance alignment with human conceptual representation.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
John Owusu Gyapong, Mawuli Gohoho, Alfred Kwesi Manyeh, Mustapha Immurana, Margaret Gyapong
{"title":"Current state and future directions of interventions for neglected tropical diseases","authors":"John Owusu Gyapong, Mawuli Gohoho, Alfred Kwesi Manyeh, Mustapha Immurana, Margaret Gyapong","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02219-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02219-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) impose severe health, social and economic burdens on millions in impoverished regions. These diseases, once overlooked, have gained global attention following strategic advocacy and planning by the World Health Organization and its partners, and are now prioritized within the Sustainable Development Goals framework. In this Review, we examine current interventions including preventive chemotherapy, innovative and intensified disease management, vector control, One Health, and improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene; and we highlight the role of human behaviour and community engagement and involvement in driving intervention success, sustainability and ownership within communities. Regional disparities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, call for tailored approaches that tackle logistical barriers, funding constraints, donor dependency, stigma and drug resistance. To control and eradicate NTDs by 2030, we require sustained political commitment, innovative financing and the greater integration of NTD strategies within broader health systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Andrea Gregor de Varda, Chiara Saponaro, Marco Marelli
{"title":"High variability in LLMs’ analogical reasoning","authors":"Andrea Gregor de Varda, Chiara Saponaro, Marco Marelli","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02224-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02224-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><span>arising from</span> T. Webb et al. <i>Nature Human Behaviour</i> https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01659-w (2025)</p><p>In a recent study, Webb, Holyoak and Lu<sup>1</sup> (henceforth WHL) demonstrated that a large language model (GPT-3, text-davinci-003) could match or even exceed human performance across several analogical reasoning tasks. This result led to the compelling conclusion that LLMs such as GPT-3 possess an emergent ability to reason by analogy. However, the findings were based on a single, proprietary model for which the releasing company provided limited public details and progressively restricted access to the internal probability distributions. Furthermore, text-davinci-003 was deprecated on 4 January 2024, and is no longer available through the OpenAI API. This poses a challenge to replicability in two ways. First, the lack of open access to the model and its recent deprecation make it difficult—if not impossible—for other researchers to verify or build upon the findings. Second, relying on a single model leaves open the question of whether the results can be extended to LLMs as a broader class of objects of scientific investigation. Without testing a diverse range of models, it is unclear whether the observed behaviours are specific to GPT-3 or represent a general property of comparable contemporary LLMs. Replicating experimental results based on proprietary models with public alternatives is thus crucial to ensure that the findings can be reproduced in the future<sup>2</sup>, generalized to new model instances, and, more generally, to adhere to transparency principles that are of paramount importance in scientific research<sup>3</sup>.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Navigating anti-science policies in environmental public health","authors":"Qian Di","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02239-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02239-w","url":null,"abstract":"Qian Di talks about what it was like doing public health research as a Chinese scientist in the USA during the first Trump administration. His experiences foreshadow challenges that lie ahead this time around.","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Byunghwee Lee, Rachith Aiyappa, Yong-Yeol Ahn, Haewoon Kwak, Jisun An
{"title":"A semantic embedding space based on large language models for modelling human beliefs","authors":"Byunghwee Lee, Rachith Aiyappa, Yong-Yeol Ahn, Haewoon Kwak, Jisun An","doi":"10.1038/s41562-025-02228-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02228-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Beliefs form the foundation of human cognition and decision-making, guiding our actions and social connections. A model encapsulating beliefs and their interrelationships is crucial for understanding their influence on our actions. However, research on belief interplay has often been limited to beliefs related to specific issues and has relied heavily on surveys. Here we propose a method to study the nuanced interplay between thousands of beliefs by leveraging online user debate data and mapping beliefs onto a neural embedding space constructed using a fine-tuned large language model. This belief space captures the interconnectedness and polarization of diverse beliefs across social issues. Our findings show that positions within this belief space predict new beliefs of individuals and estimate cognitive dissonance on the basis of the distance between existing and new beliefs. This study demonstrates how large language models, combined with collective online records of human beliefs, can offer insights into the fundamental principles that govern human belief formation.</p>","PeriodicalId":19074,"journal":{"name":"Nature Human Behaviour","volume":"260 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":29.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}