{"title":"Neural decoders: saving the baby from the bathwater.","authors":"Sangil Lee, Andrew S Kayser, Ming Hsu","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.03.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.03.004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"592-593"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144250542","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":"Covert orienting: the dark matter of social attention.","authors":"Tom Foulsham, Alan Kingstone","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Covert visual attention is often seen as a lab phenomenon. Yet, in real-life, people routinely shift their attention to others without moving their eyes, a fact overlooked in most research. To truly understand natural behaviour, we must look beyond the eyes and illuminate this dark matter of social attention.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"597-599"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144133070","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}
Casper Kerrén, Daniel Reznik, Christian F Doeller, Benjamin J Griffiths
{"title":"Exploring the role of dimensionality transformation in episodic memory.","authors":"Casper Kerrén, Daniel Reznik, Christian F Doeller, Benjamin J Griffiths","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.01.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.01.007","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Episodic memory must accomplish two adversarial goals: encoding and storing a multitude of experiences without exceeding the finite neuronal structure of the brain, and recalling memories in vivid detail. Dimensionality reduction and expansion ('dimensionality transformation') enable the brain to meet these demands. Reduction compresses sensory input into simplified, storable codes, while expansion reconstructs vivid details. Although these processes are essential to memory, their neural mechanisms for episodic memory remain unclear. Drawing on recent insights from cognitive psychology, systems neuroscience, and neuroanatomy, we propose two accounts of how dimensionality transformation occurs in the brain: structurally (via corticohippocampal pathways) and functionally (through neural oscillations). By examining cross-species evidence, we highlight neural mechanisms that may support episodic memory and identify crucial questions for future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"614-626"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143426190","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}
Andrew D Vigotsky, Gian Domenico Iannetti, A Vania Apkarian
{"title":"fMRI decoders: unlike the baby, wishful thinking is alive and well.","authors":"Andrew D Vigotsky, Gian Domenico Iannetti, A Vania Apkarian","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"591"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144250541","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":"Sequence chunking through neural encoding of ordinal positions.","authors":"Nai Ding","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.01.014","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.01.014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Grouping sensory events into chunks is an efficient strategy to integrate information across long sequences such as speech, music, and complex movements. Although chunks can be constructed based on diverse cues (e.g., sensory features, statistical patterns, internal knowledge) recent studies have consistently demonstrated that the chunks constructed by different cues are all tracked by low-frequency neural dynamics. Here, I review evidence that chunking cues drive low-frequency activity in modality-dependent networks, which interact to generate chunk-tracking activity in broad brain areas. Functionally, this work suggests that a core computation underlying sequence chunking may assign each event its ordinal position within a chunk and that this computation is causally implemented by chunk-tracking neural activity during predictive sequence chunking.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"641-654"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143476907","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 neurocomputational account of multi-line electronic gambling machines.","authors":"J Peters","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.12.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2024.12.009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Multi-line electronic gambling machines (EGMs) are strongly associated with problem gambling. Dopamine (DA) plays a central role in substance-use disorders, which share clinical and behavioral features with disordered gambling. The structural design features of multi-line EGMs likely lead to the elicitation of various dopaminergic effects within their nested anticipation-outcome structure. The present account draws an analogy between EGM gambling and latent state inference accounts of conditioning, and links maladaptive gambling-related beliefs and expectancies to a process of erroneous latent state inference that may be exacerbated by EGM design features and associated dopaminergic processes. Over the course of repeated exposure to gambling, these processes may foster the emergence of maladaptive state priors, which clinically manifest as gambling-related cognitions, beliefs, and expectancies.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"669-679"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143014948","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":"Psychological distance to science.","authors":"Bastiaan T Rutjens","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Psychological distance to science reflects how people perceive science from the perspective of the self. For many, science represents a distant endeavor that is irrelevant to day-to-day life. Research from my lab finds that distance to science correlates with, and predicts, science rejection across domains. Bringing science closer improves trust.</p>","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"594-596"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144250543","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":"'Helpless' infants are active, goal-directed agents: response to Cusack et al.","authors":"Martin Zettersten, Ruthe Foushee, Mariel K Goddu","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.01.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.01.009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":" ","pages":"587-588"},"PeriodicalIF":16.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144059252","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":"Repairing cognitive distortions in political divides","authors":"Luiza A. Santos, Catherine Garton, Jamil Zaki","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.007","url":null,"abstract":"Political animosity is on the rise, undermining both well-being and collective responses to global challenges. Interventions to decrease animosity and division often fail to yield lasting, generalized benefits. Drawing on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and new empirical evidence, we argue that entrenched political conflicts are laden with cognitive distortions similar to those observed in clinical contexts. We propose that, by adapting CBT insights to political settings, interventionists can complement and enhance current depolarizing efforts. We provide suggestions for how future efforts should equip individuals to recognize and correct biased thinking outside of the laboratory, offering a pathway toward durably mitigating division and hostility.","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144515632","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":"Spared spatial imagery solves the puzzle of aphantasia","authors":"Ian Phillips","doi":"10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49417,"journal":{"name":"Trends in Cognitive Sciences","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144515633","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}