Samuel E. Cooper,Patrick A.F. Laing,Augustin C. Hennings,Bram Vervliet
{"title":"The next generation of fear generalization","authors":"Samuel E. Cooper,Patrick A.F. Laing,Augustin C. Hennings,Bram Vervliet","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.09.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2026.09.001","url":null,"abstract":"Generalizing from past experience is a fundamental feature of cognition. Although generalization has been of long-standing interest to diverse domains in psychological science, the past decade has seen a rapid acceleration of fear generalization research in particular. The field of human fear generalization is at a pivotal juncture where it is now possible to synthesize extensive behavioral work, competing theoretical models, animal and human neuroscience, and clinical and individual-differences research to address enduring gaps. In this review, we provide an updated account of where the field of human fear generalization currently resides and offer concrete avenues for new research emphasizing tighter integration between animal and human neuroscience, prioritizing cross-disciplinary perspectives, and updating conceptual frameworks to align with rapidly advancing methods.","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149010169","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":"Language structure as training for executive functions","authors":"Velia Cardin","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.08.006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2026.08.006","url":null,"abstract":"Language plays a central role in the development of executive functions (EFs). This forum article discusses how language, as a structured environmental stimulus, can shape EF systems and impact EF outcomes. This has implications for developmental and clinical conditions in which language and EFs are jointly affected, and for congenitally deaf children and adults, who often experience reduced access to natural language during development.","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148957864","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":"Valuation as a bridge between aesthetics and creativity","authors":"Oshin Vartanian,Martin Skov,Marcos Nadal,Anjan Chatterjee","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.08.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2026.08.005","url":null,"abstract":"Evidence shows that aesthetic evaluations are underpinned by mechanisms in the reward system that compute value for objects of interest. In turn, recent behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that creativity involves a similar valuation process, as people generate and evaluate the originality and adequacy of their ideas—two standard criteria of creativity. These findings suggest that creativity and aesthetic evaluation may be supported by a domain-general mechanism for computing subjective value. We offer a proposal in which creators’ value computations are conveyed by the structure and content of their works and recovered during aesthetic evaluation through shared reward-system mechanisms and associated processes. On this view, creating and appreciating are two related expressions of a shared value-based process.","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148915156","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":"Toward an interdisciplinary mind science of advanced meditation","authors":"Jonathan M. Lieberman,Matthew D. Sacchet","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.07.009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2026.07.009","url":null,"abstract":"Meditation research is increasingly moving beyond mindfulness and other early-stage practices toward advanced meditation, encompassing states, stages, and endpoints that progressively unfold with increasing expertise through meditative development. This emerging subfield consists of interdisciplinary research that brings advanced meditation within reach of systematic scientific investigation. Here we articulate this research subfield, including its constitutive conceptual and methodological components and interrelated translational domains: philosophical and theoretical foundations, computational phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, epidemiology and public health, clinical and well-being outcomes, and relations with psychedelic experiences. This subfield represents an important development for meditation research and the mind sciences more broadly, with implications for health and well-being and for empirical understanding of the human mind.","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148908744","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}
Sebastian Dohnány,Rony Hirschhorn,Ulysse Klatzmann,Karla Matić,Camilo M. Signorelli,Hadrien Titeux,Hanna M. Tolle
{"title":"Science from the bottom up","authors":"Sebastian Dohnány,Rony Hirschhorn,Ulysse Klatzmann,Karla Matić,Camilo M. Signorelli,Hadrien Titeux,Hanna M. Tolle","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.08.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2026.08.001","url":null,"abstract":"How a scientific community is organized can affect whether disagreement drives progress or leads to isolation. Students and postdocs are uniquely placed to build communities that bridge theoretical and methodological divides. Drawing on a student-led society in consciousness science, we show how empowering early-career researchers can turn fragmentation into collaboration.","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148877378","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}
Liad Mudrik, Nathan Faivre, Michael Pitts, Aaron Schurger
{"title":"Clarifications about there being two necessary conditions for consciousness.","authors":"Liad Mudrik, Nathan Faivre, Michael Pitts, Aaron Schurger","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.06.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.06.003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"771-773"},"PeriodicalIF":20.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148425649","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":"State-dependent spatial maps for navigation.","authors":"Lavonna Mark, Lisa M Giocomo","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.01.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.01.009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Internal behavioral states influence many brain circuits, with well-known effects in sensory areas. Less is known about how these states shape downstream navigation circuits, such as the medial entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, which construct spatial maps from grid and place cells. Emerging evidence suggests that these maps can spontaneously switch ('remap') in stable environments and that remapping is linked to behavioral changes that are state related. We consider the circuit mechanisms underlying this spontaneous remapping and its role in facilitating state-dependent goal-directed behavior. We suggest that behavioral state shifts may trigger remapping similarly to external environmental changes, enabling spatial maps to adapt to current goals. This dynamic mapping could help encode distinct memories across different experiences, aligning neural representations with behavioral states.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"817-829"},"PeriodicalIF":20.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147492121","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":"What consciousness is should be determined empirically, not a priori.","authors":"Lucia Melloni, Jaan Aru, Tobias Schlicht","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.04.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.04.005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"769-770"},"PeriodicalIF":20.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148425729","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}
Roberta Bianco, Robert J Zatorre, Giacomo Novembre
{"title":"Four missing keystones in the evolutionary origins of music.","authors":"Roberta Bianco, Robert J Zatorre, Giacomo Novembre","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.07.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2026.07.001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Music is pervasive across human history, cultures, and development, yet its evolutionary origins remain unresolved due to the interplay of cultural and biological influences. We argue that identifying uniquely human musicality requires cross-primate comparative research that integrates rhythm and melody processing with exposure, computational principles, and intrinsic reward.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"777-779"},"PeriodicalIF":20.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148537512","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":"Subscription and Copyright Information","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/s1364-6613(26)00192-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/s1364-6613(26)00192-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":"268 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148883424","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}