News by Subject Social & Behavior

Research from King's College London has shown for the first time that genetics plays a significant role in whether young adults choose to go to university, which university they choose to attend and how well they do.

A new British Journal of Psychology study has looked at the details behind how cognitive performance may improve during aerobic exercise.

How exactly the grid cell system works in the human brain, and in particular with which temporal dynamics, has until now been speculation. A much-discussed possibility is that the signals from these cells create maps of 'cognitive spaces' in which humans mentally organize and store the complexities of their internal and external environments. A European-American team of scientists has now been able to demonstrate, with electrophysiological evidence, the existence of grid-like activity in the human brain.

The protein SAP102, which is implicated in intellectual disability, appears to play a key and potentially unique role in regulating the form of postsynaptic AMPAR receptor currents in the brain, a new study finds.

Preliminary results from the world's largest sleep study have shown that people who sleep on average between 7 to 8 hours per night performed better cognitively than those who slept less, or more, than this amount. Neuroscientists from Western University's renowned Brain and Mind Institute released their findings today in the high-impact journal, SLEEP.

As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, much of the public attention has focused on how successfully these technologies can compete against humans at chess and other strategy games. A philosopher from the University of Houston has taken a different approach, deconstructing the complex neural networks used in machine learning to shed light on how humans process abstract learning.

Although people often think about multiple-choice tests as tools for assessment, they can also be used to facilitate learning. A new study in Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, offers straightforward tips for constructing multiple-choice questions that are effective at both assessing current knowledge and strengthening ongoing learning.

Is there a link between differences in IQ test performance and the activity of certain genes? Researchers from Charité -- Universitätsmedizin Berlin have shown that modifications in the structure of a specific gene have a negative impact on individual test performance. This suggests that environmentally-induced epigenetic changes to our genetic material have a greater impact on intelligence than previously thought. Results from this study have been published in Translational Psychiatry.