{"title":"Predictive coding in the human olfactory system.","authors":"Sam H Lyons, Jay A Gottfried","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.005","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The human olfactory system is unusual. It deviates from the classical structure and function of other sensory cortices, and many of its basic computations remain mysterious. These idiosyncrasies have challenged the development of a clear and comprehensive theoretical framework in olfactory neuroscience. To address this challenge, we develop a theory of olfactory predictive coding that aims to unify diverse olfactory phenomena. Under this scheme, the olfactory system is not merely passively processing sensory information. Instead, it is actively issuing predictions about sensory inputs before they even arrive. We map this conceptual framework onto the micro- and macroscale neurobiology of the human olfactory system and review a variety of neurobiological, computational, and behavioral evidence in support of this scheme.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"814-826"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12353100/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144023362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"GenAI and the psychology of work.","authors":"Erik Hermann, Stefano Puntoni, Carey K Morewedge","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Work is a central source of identity and meaning. The rapid and widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping workplaces. Unlike previous technologies, GenAI can demonstrate cognitive, creative, and interpersonal capabilities that challenge traditional human-machine boundaries and redefine the knowledge, task, and social characteristics of work. GenAI can benefit workers by enhancing their productivity and performance. It can also psychologically threaten workers' needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness, which can initiate five coping strategies to mitigate these threats. We unpack the effects of GenAI on work and workers, show the importance of addressing its potential psychological threats, and explain how to foster human-centered workplaces that balance the benefits and risks of GenAI.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"802-813"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143994856","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":"Addressing misperceptions takes more than combating fake news.","authors":"Jennifer Allen, Gordon Pennycook, David G Rand","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.07.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.07.002","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Misinformation research should broaden its focus beyond 'fake news' to understand how people develop misperceptions and make misinformed decisions. New research directions include: (i) studying false claims from elites and accurate-but-misleading content; (ii) measuring behavioral outcomes in addition to belief and sharing; and (iii) reevaluating existing interventions in these contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"779-782"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144790540","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":"How to make artificial agents more like natural agents.","authors":"Michael Tomasello","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.07.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.07.004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The quest to make artificial intelligence models more human-like could profit from a study of biological agents and their evolution. Recent research suggests that animal species on the evolutionary line to humans employed a series of qualitatively distinct agentive architectures of ever-increasing complexity, with humans then forming shared agencies coordinated via linguistic communication.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"783-786"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144812551","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}
Christin Schulze, Ada Aka, Daniel M Bartels, Stefan F Bucher, Jake R Embrey, Todd M Gureckis, Gerald Häubl, Mark K Ho, Ian Krajbich, Alexander K Moore, Gabriele Oettingen, Joan D K Ongchoco, Ryan Oprea, Nicholas Reinholtz, Ben R Newell
{"title":"A timeline of cognitive costs in decision-making.","authors":"Christin Schulze, Ada Aka, Daniel M Bartels, Stefan F Bucher, Jake R Embrey, Todd M Gureckis, Gerald Häubl, Mark K Ho, Ian Krajbich, Alexander K Moore, Gabriele Oettingen, Joan D K Ongchoco, Ryan Oprea, Nicholas Reinholtz, Ben R Newell","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent research from economics, psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and marketing is increasingly interested in the idea that people face cognitive costs when making decisions. Reviewing and synthesizing this research, we develop a framework of cognitive costs that organizes concepts along a temporal dimension and maps out when costs occur in the decision-making process and how they impact decisions. Our unifying framework broadens the scope of research on cognitive costs to a wider timeline of cognitive processing. We identify implications and recommendations emerging from our framework for intervening on behavior to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our day, from improving health and saving decisions to mitigating the consequences of climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"827-839"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144112423","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}
Lilian A Weber, Debbie M Yee, Dana M Small, Frederike H Petzschner
{"title":"The interoceptive origin of reinforcement learning.","authors":"Lilian A Weber, Debbie M Yee, Dana M Small, Frederike H Petzschner","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.008","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Rewards play a crucial role in sculpting all motivated behavior. Traditionally, research on reinforcement learning has centered on how rewards guide learning and decision-making. Here, we examine the origins of rewards themselves. Specifically, we discuss that the critical signal sustaining reinforcement for food is generated internally and subliminally during the process of digestion. As such, a shift in our understanding of primary rewards as an immediate sensory gratification to a state-dependent evaluation of an action's impact on vital physiological processes is called for. We integrate this perspective into a revised reinforcement learning framework that recognizes the subliminal nature of biological rewards and their dependency on internal states and goals.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"840-854"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12400946/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144276449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reward is enough for social learning.","authors":"David Schultner, Lucas Molleman, Björn Lindström","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.012","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Adaptive behaviour relies on selective social learning, yet the mechanisms underlying this capacity remain debated. A new account demonstrates that key strategies can emerge through reward-based learning of social features, explaining the widely observed flexibility of social learning and illuminating the cognitive basis of cultural evolution.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"787-789"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144718971","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":"A high-dimensional model of social impressions.","authors":"Jonathan B Freeman, Chujun Lin","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.011","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People form social impressions from visual cues such as faces, which are argued by various models to arise from some limited set of fixed dimensions (e.g., trustworthiness and dominance). We argue that these dimensions, rather than reflecting intrinsic mechanisms, emerge from adaptive visuo-semantic processes in a high-dimensional neural-state space. Drawing on attractor neural-network models, we propose a framework treating social impressions as dynamic trajectories that stabilize over time, influenced not only by visual cues but also by conceptual associations and higher-order social cognition. Unlike low-dimensional models, this framework can account for cultural, individual, and situational factors that shape impressions. A high-dimensional framework makes several novel predictions and can offer a more accurate and complete understanding of the fluidity and complexity of social perception.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"790-801"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144163423","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":"A hierarchical model of early brain functional network development.","authors":"Wei Gao","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Functional brain networks emerge prenatally, grow interactively during the first years of life, and optimize both within-network topology and between-network interactions as individuals age. This review summarizes research that has characterized this process over the past two decades, and aims to link functional network growth with emerging behaviors, thereby developing a more holistic understanding of the developing brain and behavior from a functional network perspective. This synthesis suggests that the development of the brain's functional networks follows an overlapping hierarchy, progressing from primary sensory/motor to socioemotional-centered development and finally to higher-order cognitive/executive control networks. Risk-related alterations, resilience factors, treatment effects, and novel therapeutic opportunities are also discussed to encourage the consideration of future imaging-assisted methods for identifying risks and interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"855-868"},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12353820/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144037918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Memory editing during sleep: mechanisms, clinical applications, and technological innovations.","authors":"Tao Xia, Xiaoqing Hu","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.07.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.07.010","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sleep is not merely a passive state: it actively consolidates memories via reactivation of recent experiences. Beyond preserving precious memories, sleep provides a critical, yet underappreciated window for editing aversive memories. We propose an integrative framework for sleep-based memory editing, outlining three key strategies: extinction via reactivation of original memories, interference reactivation via strengthening of wakeful interfering memories, and interference induction via the introduction of new stimuli during sleep reactivation. These strategies leverage sleep's neural processing to weaken aversive memories. Moreover, emerging evidence suggests that sleep-based memory editing can aid the treatment of psychiatric disorders. Technological innovations, including closed-loop neuromodulation, wearable devices, and neural decoding, allow more accurate and accessible interventions. These developments position sleep for adaptive memory editing, ultimately safeguarding mental health.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":17.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144976491","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}