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Probabilistic mixture models have contributed significantly to advancements in visual working memory research in recent decades. In a new paper, Schurgin and colleagues revisit the basic assumptions of mixture models and suggest that we cannot understand memory without first considering perception.

Electrical stimulation of the human cortex, undertaken for brain surgery, triggers percepts and feelings. A new study documents an ordering principle to these effects: the farther removed from sensory input or motor output structures, the less likely it is that a region contributes to consciousness.

Stroke can lead to debilitating consequences, including loss of language. An important goal of stroke research is to use machine learning to predict outcomes and response to therapy. A new study compares different approaches to predicting post-stroke outcomes and highlights the need for systematic optimization and validation to ultimately translate scientific insights to clinical settings.

Human culture is unique. Or is it? A new study reveals unexpected cultural diversity in the fine-grained details of chimpanzee termite fishing behaviour. These novel findings shed light on the richness of chimpanzee cultural diversity and reveal a narrower gap between the cultures of humans and other apes.

How do we effectively process the information arriving to our senses to make adaptive decisions and behave appropriately, and which brain areas are responsible? A new study combines multimodal noninvasive neuroimaging in humans to reveal the anatomical locus of efficient sensory evidence accumulation.

Regular physical exercise has been proposed as a cost-effective strategy for keeping our brains sharp, but it remains unclear how we can optimise the cognitive benefits of long-term exercise. New findings inform us how exercise intensity, progression and type can increase expected cognitive gains and how this differs by sex.

Although disease dynamics of prey are influenced by predator behaviour, little is known about the potential effects of wide-ranging post-industrial hunters. Mysterud et al. describe the movement behaviour of Norwegian hunters using more than 165,000 hunting records from 2001–2017, showing that hunters migrate to and from areas of high prey density, potentially moving pathogens into previously unaffected areas.

When making economic decisions, our choices are often influenced by irrelevant information. One prominent explanation appeals to normalisation in neural circuits. A new paper by Gluth and colleagues suggests that instead, attentional processes may be responsible.

Motivated control processes help us optimize our behaviour to deal with competing task demands: seeking rewards while minimizing the associated effort. A new study in Nature Human Behaviour argues that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a key contributor to motivated control, tracks a computational quantity akin to surprise that is generated when events differ from our expectations.

What is the connection between the curated narrative of a society and the representations of memories in the individual brains of its members? In a new study, Gagnepain and colleagues show that the organization of memories in the brain reflects the structure of a culture’s shared discourse.

With diversity rising in the United States, do people believe that progress for black Americans means increased discrimination against white Americans? Despite prior evidence of such ‘zero-sum’ beliefs, a provocative new study by Earle and Hodson challenges this narrative with large, nationally representative samples.

Conveying an impression of competence is important for jobseekers and politicians alike. New work from Oh, Shafir and Todorov suggests that subtle differences in clothing shape our impressions of how competent people are. In particular, subtly richer-looking clothes elicit greater perceived competence.

Interventions to reverse harmful traditions, such as female genital cutting, have had mixed success, sometimes backfiring. Policymakers’ intentions collide with cultural traditions and the ethics of tolerance collide with universal human rights. New research introduces a cultural evolutionary modelling framework to explain previous results and guide future campaigns for endogenous change.

There is a longstanding debate about whether culture shapes regimes or regimes shape culture. New research by Ruck et al. resolves the debate in favor of culture’s causal primacy.

There is a consensus that obesity and addiction are similar, showing overlap in cognition, neural activity and personality traits. A new study using a more nuanced approach for analysing traits reveals how obesity and addiction are less similar than previously thought, while the construct of uncontrolled eating is closely related to addiction.

We have known for a while that different doctors can produce different effects using the same substance, or even placebo, such that otherwise effective treatments might become ineffective or placebo becomes effective. Chang and colleagues now clarify that such differential effects are likely transmitted by subtle facial cues, using a placebo–pain model.

When angry, we are often advised to ‘hold your breath and count to ten’ to prevent a rash response. Could a similar time conflict underlie the expression of unwanted habits? A new study in Nature Human Behaviour shows that habits can be provoked with greater time pressure, but are overridden if an individual is given sufficient time to prepare.

Memory slowly falters as we age. A new study by Dahl and colleagues tests the involvement of a tiny region hidden in the brainstem, the locus coeruleus, which enables cellular processes of learning. Better initial learning in older individuals was related to greater integrity of this region, particularly for the part that is connected to other memory regions in the brain.

How does the relationship between political leaders and their followers affect attitudes and behaviours? Kunst and colleagues show that the psychological closeness followers experience with Donald Trump is associated with more willingness to endorse and engage in political violence.

Many theories have been put forward to explain how different sound systems evolved. Whether differences in vocal tract shape play a role has so far remained unclear. Dediu et al. document subtle differences among four broad ethnolinguistic groups. Using computer simulations, they demonstrate how differences can be amplified over time, leading to diverse vowel systems.