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The messages, constantly repeated on a wide array of radio stations and television channels, were designed to reinforce tribal loyalties and convince Law and Justice voters that they are “real” Poles, not impostors or traitors like their political opponents.

Some voters live in a so-called populist bubble, where they hear nationalist and xenophobic messages, learn to distrust fact-based media and evidence-based science, and become receptive to conspiracy theories and suspicious of democratic institutions. Others read and hear completely different media, respect different authorities, and search for a different sort of news.

This is a question about how to get people to listen at all. Just shouting about “facts” will get you nowhere with those who no longer trust the sources that produce them.

When it comes to making decisions that involve risks, we humans can be irrational in quite systematic ways

when the emotions we feel aren’t correctly calibrated for the threat or when we’re making judgments in domains where we have little knowledge or relevant information, our feelings become more likely to lead us astray.

when Professors Tversky and Kahneman framed the question differently, such that the first option would ensure that only 400 people would die and the second option offered a 33 percent chance that nobody would perish and a 67 percent chance that all 600 would die, people’s preferences reversed. Seventy-eight percent now favored the second option.

“I’m assuming in my mind that Trump wins, because I can’t deal with being let down like that again,”

“Secretly, in a little corner in the back of my mind, I’m wishing and hoping that Biden wins. But most of my brain is saying, ‘OK, Trump wins and New York is not getting a fiscal bailout and we’re going to lose more ground on the environment, we’re going to lose on Roe v. Wade, we’re going to lose on health care.’”

It’s hard to overstate the degree of anxiety in America right now, as the country confronts a Hydra of troubles: the pandemic, the economy, the fires, the protests, the violent plots against public officials, the assault on voting rights, the state-sponsored disinformation, the sense that democracy itself is on the ballot.

“At least qualitatively, you see some shifts in content of dreams from the beginning of the pandemic into the later months,” Dr. Barrett said. “It’s an indication of what is worrying people most at various points during the year.”

Taken together, the papers also hint at an answer to a larger question: What is the purpose of dreaming, if any?

In recent years, brain scientists have argued that REM sleep — the period of sleep during which most dreaming occurs — bolsters creative thinking, learning and emotional health, providing a kind of unconscious psychotherapy.

pins their likely origin to a group of extinct wolves.

pins their likely origin to a group of extinct wolves.

Now an international team of researchers has sequenced and analyzed an additional 27 genomes of ancient dogs.

dubious psychological techniques were used to put a teenager behind bars for life. These flawed ideas may still be at play in other criminal cases.

but in the '70s, hypnosis seemed like a powerful tool to use in criminal investigations. So when police found Jeffrey Boyajian's body slumped against a dumpster in 1979, they relied on hypnosis to find suspects.

This idea that you can pluck a memory from your mind and then use hypnosis to zoom in on it like a sports replay runs counter to what researchers now know about how the mind works.

Social platforms let us stay in touch with friends and forge new relationships like never before, but those increases in communication and social connection may come at a cost. In a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers showed that those who documented and shared their experiences on social media formed less precise memories of those events.

n a series of three studies led by Diana Tamir of Princeton University, researchers explored how taking photos and videos for social media affects people’s enjoyment, engagement and memory of those experiences.

Tamir and her team found that sharing experiences on social media did not seem to affect how much people felt that they had enjoyed the experience or were engaged. However, those who wrote down, recorded or shared their experiences performed about 10% worse on memory tests across all experiments.

Americans who rely the most on social media to get their news are also far less likely to have accurate or complete knowledge of political events

This study was looking at the relationship between these genes and the possibility that they are a factor in what causes gender dysphoria.

By examining a link between genetics and gender dysphoria, this study is investigating a potential biological cause for the existence of transgender people.

“This is nothing new. These arguments have happened before with research into the ‘gay gene’ in the late 1980s and early 90s.”

In a radical experiment that has some experts questioning what it means to be "alive," scientists have restored brain circulation and some cell activity in pigs' brains hours after the animals died

that in some cases, the cell death processes can be postponed or even reversed, Sestan said.

Still, the researchers stressed that they did not observe any kind of activity in the pigs' brains that would be needed for normal brain function or things like awareness or consciousness.

These findings suggest that pressing child witnesses to answer questions they are initially reluctant to answer is not an effective practice, and the consistency of children’s responses over time is not necessarily an indication of the accuracy of their eyewitness memory.

“Memories are who we are,” says Huganir. “But making memories is also a biological process.”

This process raises many questions. How does the process affect our brain? How do experiences and learning change the connections in our brains and create memories?

Memory: It’s All About Connections

. The purpose of this review article is to summarize recent researches focusing on phantom limb in order to discuss its definition, mechanisms, and treatments.

The incidence of phantom limb pain has varied from 2% in earlier records to higher rates today. Initially, patients were less likely to mention pain symptoms than today which is a potential explanation for the discrepancy in incidence rates. However, Sherman et al.4 discuss that only 17% phantom limb complaints were initiated treated by physicians. Consequently, it is important to determine what constitutes phantom pain in order to provide efficacious care. Phantom pain is pain sensation to a limb, organ or other tissue after amputation and/or nerve injury.5 In podiatry, the predominant cause of phantom limb pain is after limb amputation due to diseased state presenting with an unsalvageable limb. Postoperative pain sensations from stump neuroma pain, prosthesis, fibrosis, and residual local tissue inflammation can be similar to phantom limb pain (PLP). Patients with PLP complain of various sensations including burning, stinging, aching, and piercing pain with changing warmth and cold sensation to the amputated area which waxes and wanes.6 Onset of symptoms may be elicited by environmental, emotional, or physical changes.

The human body encompasses various neurologic mechanisms allowing reception, transport, recognition, and response to numerous stimuli. Pain, temperature, crude touch, and pressure sensory information are carried to the central nervous system via the anterolateral system, with pain & temperature information transfer via lateral spinothalamic tracts to the parietal lobe. In detail, pain sensation from the lower extremity is transported from a peripheral receptor to a first degree pseudounipolar neurons in the dorsal root ganglion and decussate and ascend to the third-degree neurons within the thalamus.7 This sensory information will finally arrive at the primary sensory cortex in the postcentral gyrus of the parietal lobe which houses the sensory homunculus.8 It is unsurprising that with an amputation that such an intricate highway of information transport to and from the periphery may have the potential for problematic neurologic developments.

Different areas process sounds, sights or pertinent prior knowledge.

neuroscience has operated in a traditional science research model: Individual labs work on their own, usually focusing on one or a few brain areas.

The BRAIN Initiative, which the Obama administration launched in 2013, started to encourage the kind of collaboration that neuroscience needs.

there’s no such thing as right-brained or left-brained.

The left cerebral hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and about 90 percent of people prefer to write with their right hand, indicating left brain motor dominance.

language skills are left lateralized, or largely controlled by the left hemisphere, in over 90 percent of people. That includes 78 percent of people who are not right-handed.

The Importance of a Positive Classroom

Simply put, students learn better when they view the learning environment as positive and supportive

A positive environment is one in which students feel a sense of belonging, trust others, and feel encouraged to tackle challenges, take risks, and ask questions

By treating them as the same, we miss nuances that are important for understanding human decision-making.

Biases—regardless of whether they are hardwired into us due to evolution, learned through socialization or direct experience—or a function of genetically influenced traits, represent predispositions to favor a given conclusion over other conclusions. Therefore, biases might be considered the leanings, priorities, and inclinations that influence our decisions[2].

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that allow us to make decisions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than if we considered additional information. They are derived from experience and formal learning and are open to continuous updates based on new experiences and information. Therefore, heuristics represent the strategies we employ to filter and attend to information[3].

And Mr. Trump’s typo? It was surely not accidental. That extra “i” circumvented Twitter’s efforts to hide the hashtag in search results. Called #typosquatting, this tactic is often used by trolls and media manipulators to get around the rules of social media platforms.

Constant repetition makes the charge sound true, and blunts accusations of unethical behavior against Mr. Trump’s own children. With the hashtag, Mr. Trump found a way to tell supporters: Here is all you need to know about the Democratic nominee.

The hashtag took a complicated issue with legitimate questions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukraine and China — and reduced it to a slogan that could also be used to spread falsehoods about Joe Biden

The moments we remember from the first years of our lives are often our most treasured because we have carried them longest. The chances are, they are also completely made up.

Around four out of every 10 of us have fabricated our first memory, according to researchers. This is thought to be because our brains do not develop the ability to store autobiographical memories at least until we reach two years old.

Yet a surprising number of us have some flicker of memory from before that age

Lack of clear enunciation, unusual accents or poor electronic transmission can all serve to mislead one’s own perceptions. Most mishearings substitute one real word for another, however absurd or out of context, but sometimes the brain comes up with a neologism.

If a mishearing seems plausible, one may not think that one has misheard; it is only if the mishearing is sufficiently implausible, or entirely out of context, that one thinks, “This can’t be right,” and (perhaps with some embarrassment) asks the speaker to repeat himself, as I often do, or even to spell out the misheard words or phrases.

While mishearings may seem to be of little special interest, they can cast an unexpected light on the nature of perception — the perception of speech, in particular. What is extraordinary, first, is that they present themselves as clearly articulated words or phrases, not as jumbles of sound. One mishears rather than just fails to hear.