News by Subject Social & Behavior

The more intelligent a person, the fewer connections there are between the neurons in his cerebral cortex. This is the result of a study conducted by neuroscientists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum; the study was performed using a specific neuroimaging technique that provides insights into the wiring of the brain on a microstructural level. Together with colleagues from Albuquerque and Berlin, the team from Bochum published their report in the journal Nature Communications on May 15, 2018.

Consumers who reflected on their recently used personal belongings experienced less desire for an unexpectedly encountered product, were less likely to buy impulsively and expressed a lower willingness to pay for new products, according to a new paper by marketing and consumer behavior experts at Rice University.

According to Dr. Gilead, 'In order to make informed decisions, people need to be able to consider the merits and weaknesses of different opinions and adapt to new information. This involuntary, 'reflex-like' tendency to consider things we already believe in as being true, might dampen our ability to think things through in a rational way. Future studies could explore how other factors, such as acute stress or liberal or conservative viewpoints, affect this tendency to accept or reject opinions in a 'knee-jerk' manner.'

Innovators aren't just born, they can be made, according to recent research from the University of California San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy.

Making the transition from high school to college may be stressful -- but it can be downright depressing for students who graduate from a school with peers of high academic ability and wind up at a college with students of lesser ability, according to a new study.

In the natural world, intelligence takes many forms. It could be a bat using echolocation to expertly navigate in the dark, or an octopus adapting its behavior to survive in the deep ocean. Likewise, in the computer science world, multiple forms of artificial intelligence are emerging. As will be presented at the CNS conference, cognitive neuroscientists are using those emerging networks to enhance understanding of one of the most elusive intelligence systems, the human brain.