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| Open AccessGraded decisions in the human brain
Whether decisions are made in a graded or all-or-none fashion remains unclear. Here, the authors provide evidence to suggest that decisions conclude in a graded, rather than a binary, manner, thus providing an analog framework for flexible choice behavior.
- Tao Xie
- , Markus Adamek
- & Jan Kubanek
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| Open AccessHeuristics in risky decision-making relate to preferential representation of information
Individuals differ in how they weight probability and reward information when making risky choices. Here, the authors use magnetoencephalography to test whether such variation is related to how information is neurally represented during choice evaluation.
- Evan M. Russek
- , Rani Moran
- & Quentin J. M. Huys
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| Open AccessInformation-based TMS to mid-lateral prefrontal cortex disrupts action goals during emotional processing
The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is thought to maintain goal-relevant representations that promote cognitive control, but causal evidence has been limited. By targeting action-goal representations in LPFC with transcranial magnetic stimulation and fMRI, the authors found that LPFC promotes goal oriented behaviour during emotional processing. Reviewer recognition:
- R. C. Lapate
- , M. K. Heckner
- & M. D’Esposito
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| Open AccessComputational reconstruction of mental representations using human behavior
Revealing how the human mind represents information is a longstanding goal of cognitive science. Here, the authors develop a method to reconstruct the mental representations of multiple visual concepts using behavioral judgments.
- Laurent Caplette
- & Nicholas B. Turk-Browne
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| Open AccessImpacts of human mobility on the citywide transmission dynamics of 18 respiratory viruses in pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic years
Population mobility is associated with SARS-CoV-2 transmission but its impacts on other respiratory viruses are not well understood. Here, the authors investigate associations between mobile phone-derived mobility metrics and the dynamics of 18 respiratory viruses in Seattle, Washington from 2018 to 2022.
- Amanda C. Perofsky
- , Chelsea L. Hansen
- & Cécile Viboud
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| Open AccessChildren exhibit superior memory for attended but outdated information compared to adults
Children typically exhibit weaker memory than adults. Here, the authors report a developmental reversal-like phenomenon that children show better memory for attended but outdated information, suggesting underdeveloped memory selection in children.
- Yingtao Fu
- , Tingyu Guo
- & Hui Chen
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Article
| Open AccessThe differential impact of climate interventions along the political divide in 60 countries
A major barrier to climate mitigation is the political polarization of climate change. Here, the authors examine which of several interventions increase people’s climate policy support and climate action across ideological boundaries.
- Michael Berkebile-Weinberg
- , Danielle Goldwert
- & Madalina Vlasceanu
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Article
| Open AccessEye movements track prioritized auditory features in selective attention to natural speech
Anatomical overlap of respective brain regions suggests a joint network for attention and eye movements. Here, the authors show that gaze aligns with the acoustics of attended natural speech and differentiates between a target and a distractor in a cocktail party scenario.
- Quirin Gehmacher
- , Juliane Schubert
- & Nathan Weisz
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| Open AccessLoneliness trajectories over three decades are associated with conspiracist worldviews in midlife
Here, the authors show that elevated loneliness in adolescence and increasing loneliness over three decades is associated with heightened conspiracy beliefs in midlife.
- Kinga Bierwiaczonek
- , Sam Fluit
- & Jonas R. Kunst
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| Open AccessPrediction error processing and sharpening of expected information across the face-processing hierarchy
Perception and neural processing of sensory information are influenced by prior expectations. Here the authors show investigate how prior expectations contribute to face processing in the brain.
- Annika Garlichs
- & Helen Blank
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Article
| Open AccessWorldwide divergence of values
The authors test whether social values have become converged or diverged across national cultures over the last 40 years using a 76-country analysis of the World Values Survey. They show that values have diverged, especially between high-income Western countries and the rest of the world.
- Joshua Conrad Jackson
- & Danila Medvedev
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| Open AccessTiming along the cardiac cycle modulates neural signals of reward-based learning
Previous work has shown that natural cardiac rhythms modulate the perception and reaction to sensory cues through changes in associated neural signals. Here, the authors show that sensitivity to prediction errors during reward learning is related to the phase of the cardiac cycle.
- Elsa F. Fouragnan
- , Billy Hosking
- & Alejandra Sel
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Article
| Open AccessAttribute latencies causally shape intertemporal decisions
People have different latencies in processing amount and time attributes when making intertemporal choices. Here, the authors test the causal effect of these latencies on choice by altering the onset of amount and time information, which alters people’s patience.
- Fadong Chen
- , Jiehui Zheng
- & Ian Krajbich
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Article
| Open AccessExome-wide analysis implicates rare protein-altering variants in human handedness
Left-handedness is a common and partly heritable trait. Here, the authors perform a genome-wide screen for rare, protein-altering genetic variants associated with handedness in over 350,000 people, and implicate the tubulin gene TUBB4B.
- Dick Schijven
- , Sourena Soheili-Nezhad
- & Clyde Francks
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| Open AccessCollective incentives reduce over-exploitation of social information in unconstrained human groups
Individual decisions drive the dynamics of collective systems. Here, the authors use an immersive-reality experiment to show that group incentives reduce social information use and improve performance in naturalistic collectives.
- Dominik Deffner
- , David Mezey
- & Ralf H. J. M. Kurvers
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Article
| Open AccessGenetic similarity between relatives provides evidence on the presence and history of assortative mating
Non-random mating can complicate genetic studies, but implications hinge on its history in prior generations. Here, the authors use genetic similarity between relatives to investigate which traits show evidence of recent changes in mating behavior.
- Hans Fredrik Sunde
- , Nikolai Haahjem Eftedal
- & Fartein Ask Torvik
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| Open AccessIntracortical recordings reveal vision-to-action cortical gradients driving human exogenous attention
How external stimuli capture our attention remains poorly understood. Here, the authors use a data-driven approach with human intracortical recordings to show that exogenous attention phenomena, such as inhibition of return, emerge at the intersection of visual and response signals across cortical gradients and timescales that shape the segregation of attentional events.
- Tal Seidel Malkinson
- , Dimitri J. Bayle
- & Paolo Bartolomeo
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| Open AccessFace and context integration in emotion inference is limited and variable across categories and individuals
People infer emotions using faces and situations, yet little is known about how these are integrated. Here, the authors show that situations are often sufficient to infer emotions, with variability in integration across categories and individuals.
- Srishti Goel
- , Julian Jara-Ettinger
- & Maria Gendron
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| Open AccessWalking modulates visual detection performance according to stride cycle phase
“Visual performance might vary during natural behaviour such as walking. Here, the authors use wireless virtual reality to show that oscillations in performance on a visual detection task were systematically linked to the phase of the stride cycle.”
- Matthew J. Davidson
- , Frans A. J. Verstraten
- & David Alais
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| Open AccessPublic perceptions and support of climate intervention technologies across the Global North and Global South
This article establishes a global baseline of public perceptions of climate-intervention technologies. Publics across the global South are more favorable and supportive but concerned about impacts on mitigation and unequal burdens of risks on poor countries.
- Chad M. Baum
- , Livia Fritz
- & Benjamin K. Sovacool
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| Open AccessPeople quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice are more collectivistic than people assigned to farm wheat
According to the rice theory, the demands of rice farming might make cultures more collectivistic. Here the authors provide evidence in support of this theory by showing that Chinese farmers who were quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice score higher on measures related to collectivism than those assigned to farm wheat.
- Thomas Talhelm
- & Xiawei Dong
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| Open AccessA neural signature for the subjective experience of threat anticipation under uncertainty
The neural systems which underlie the experience of anticipated threat under uncertainty are not well understood. Here, the authors find a whole-brain signature which specifically predicts anxious anticipation.
- Xiqin Liu
- , Guojuan Jiao
- & Benjamin Becker
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| Open AccessPsychological well-being in Europe after the outbreak of war in Ukraine
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected the global economy, environment, and political order. Here, the authors show that it also coincided with a temporary decline in psychological well-being across Europe.
- Julian Scharbert
- , Sarah Humberg
- & Mitja D. Back
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| Open AccessTimbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales
Consonance is crucial to diverse musical styles and is traditionally attributed to simple frequency ratios between tones. Here, the authors show timbral effects on consonance that challenge this view and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales.
- Raja Marjieh
- , Peter M. C. Harrison
- & Nori Jacoby
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Article
| Open AccessLeisure engagement in older age is related to objective and subjective experiences of aging
The benefits of different leisure activities for different aspects of aging remain unclear. Here, authors show that performing physical or creative activities is associated with important aging metrics and could help to prevent age-related decline.
- Jessica K. Bone
- , Feifei Bu
- & Daisy Fancourt
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| Open AccessChanges in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries
Tightness-looseness theory predicts that social norms strengthen following threat. Here the authors test this and find that, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing norms increased, but no evidence was observed for a robust change in most other norms.
- Giulia Andrighetto
- , Aron Szekely
- & Kimmo Eriksson
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Registered Report
| Open AccessBayesian evaluation of diverging theories of episodic and affective memory distortions in dysphoria
The authors investigated memory distortions in participants with dysphoria who did not have a diagnosed mental illness. The participants retrieved positive memories with diminished details and emotions, but negative memories with enhanced details and normal or enhanced emotions.
- Sascha B. Duken
- , Liza Keessen
- & Vanessa A. van Ast
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| Open AccessGrid-like entorhinal representation of an abstract value space during prospective decision making
Values of choice options often change over time. Here, the authors show that during prospective decision making the entorhinal cortex encodes changing values using a grid-like representation, suggesting the formation of a cognitive value map.
- Alexander Nitsch
- , Mona M. Garvert
- & Christian F. Doeller
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| Open AccessParallel developmental changes in children’s production and recognition of line drawings of visual concepts
Children produce drawings prolifically throughout childhood. Here, the authors conducted a systematic study of how children create and recognize line drawings across development and suggest that changes in children’s drawings reflect refinements in how children represent visual concepts.
- Bria Long
- , Judith E. Fan
- & Michael C. Frank
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Article
| Open AccessImplicit racial biases are lower in more populous more diverse and less segregated US cities
Implicit biases are influenced by social contexts which, in cities, are shaped by the constraints of urban infrastructure networks. Here the authors show that more populous, more diverse, and less segregated cities are less biased and that this is predicted by a complex systems model.
- Andrew J. Stier
- , Sina Sajjadi
- & Marc G. Berman
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| Open AccessCortical depth profiles in primary visual cortex for illusory and imaginary experiences
Whether visual illusions and mental imagery are similarly represented in visual cortex is not well understood. Here, the authors show that imagery content is mainly detectable in deep layers of V1, whereas illusory content is decodable mainly from superficial layers.
- Johanna Bergmann
- , Lucy S. Petro
- & Lars Muckli
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| Open AccessAcoustic and language-specific sources for phonemic abstraction from speech
How speech sounds come to be understood as language remains unclear. Here, the authors find that brain responses to speech in part reflect abstraction of phonological units specific to the language being spoken, mediated through relationships between acoustic features.
- Anna Mai
- , Stephanie Riès
- & Timothy Q. Gentner
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| Open AccessNeural representations of situations and mental states are composed of sums of representations of the actions they afford
How do people predict other’s actions? Behaviour is driven by both internal mental state and external situational factors. Here, the authors use fMRI to demonstrate that actions are linked to these factors: when people think about states and situations, they average over the representations of the actions they afford.
- Mark A. Thornton
- & Diana I. Tamir
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| Open AccessHuman brain representations of internally generated outcomes of approximate calculation revealed by ultra-high-field brain imaging
How the brain represents quantities remains unclear. Here the authors identify dorsal stream sensory-motor integration areas as a candidate region for the internal generation of numerical contents during mental calculations.
- Sébastien Czajko
- , Alexandre Vignaud
- & Evelyn Eger
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| Open AccessThe psychological, computational, and neural foundations of indebtedness
Receiving a favour may induce a feeling of indebtedness in a beneficiary. Here, the authors develop and validate a model that captures the psychological, computational, and neural bases of how indebtedness arises and influences reciprocity behaviour.
- Xiaoxue Gao
- , Eshin Jolly
- & Luke J. Chang
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Article
| Open AccessBehavioral consequences of second-person pronouns in written communications between authors and reviewers of scientific papers
Second-person pronouns, such as “you” and “yours”, are common in human communication. Here, the authors show that in peer review, authors who address reviewers with second person pronouns receive fewer questions, shorter responses, and more positive feedback.
- Zhuanlan Sun
- , C. Clark Cao
- & Chao Ma
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| Open AccessPersonalized functional brain network topography is associated with individual differences in youth cognition
Individual differences in cognitive abilities during childhood are associated with important outcomes in adolescence. Here, the authors show associations between youth cognition and individual-specific patterns of cortical brain network organization.
- Arielle S. Keller
- , Adam R. Pines
- & Theodore D. Satterthwaite
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| Open AccessMental search of concepts is supported by egocentric vector representations and restructured grid maps
Our brains use complementary egocentric and allocentric reference frames to represent target locations in the physical environment. Here, the authors show that similar mechanisms are recruited when people mentally search for concepts in memory.
- Simone Viganò
- , Rena Bayramova
- & Roberto Bottini
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| Open AccessIntrospective inference counteracts perceptual distortion
People can have perceptual illusions that they realize are not real. Here, the authors show that this type of reality testing can be explained by a Bayesian inference model that incorporates introspective knowledge.
- Andra Mihali
- , Marianne Broeker
- & Guillermo Horga
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| Open AccessReputations for treatment of outgroup members can prevent the emergence of political segregation in cooperative networks
Social networks often segregate based on political identities. We show that such segregation is reduced when people know how others behave towards those from their outgroup and ingroup
- Brent Simpson
- , Bradley Montgomery
- & David Melamed
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| Open AccessBehavioral representational similarity analysis reveals how episodic learning is influenced by and reshapes semantic memory
Pre-existing semantic knowledge provides an organizational structure for episodic memories. Here, the authors show that episodic learning systematically shapes this semantic space depending on how learners engage with material and the strength of prior associations.
- Catherine R. Walsh
- & Jesse Rissman
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| Open AccessRelational visual representations underlie human social interaction recognition
Humans are adept at recognizing social interactions in visual scenes. Here, the authors develop a computational model of this ability, and show that humans can make complex social interaction judgments using relational visual representations.
- Manasi Malik
- & Leyla Isik
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| Open AccessSelf-reported childhood family adversity is linked to an attenuated gain of trust during adolescence
The authors examined how family experiences are linked to the development of trust in adolescence and young adulthood. They show that trust increases over time but self-reported family adversity can hinder this, and trust may act as a resilience factor in maintaining positive peer relations.
- Andrea M. F. Reiter
- , Andreas Hula
- & Raymond J. Dolan
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| Open AccessA canonical trajectory of executive function maturation from adolescence to adulthood
Goal-directed cognition (executive function) is thought to develop through adolescence. Here, the authors find evidence across multiple datasets and measures that executive function develops until 18–20 years old.
- Brenden Tervo-Clemmens
- , Finnegan J. Calabro
- & Beatriz Luna
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| Open AccessNeural and computational underpinnings of biased confidence in human reinforcement learning
The mechanism of confidence formation in learning remains poorly understood. Here, the authors show that both dorsal and ventral prefrontal networks encode confidence, but only the ventral network incorporates the valence-induced bias.
- Chih-Chung Ting
- , Nahuel Salem-Garcia
- & Maël Lebreton
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Article
| Open AccessDynamic emotional states shape the episodic structure of memory
Changes in people’s external environments lead to the segmentation of experience into discrete memories, or episodes. Here, the authors show that dynamic fluctuations in internal states, namely musically elicited emotions, also shape the episodic structure of memories.
- Mason McClay
- , Matthew E. Sachs
- & David Clewett
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Article
| Open AccessPartner choice and cooperation in social dilemmas can increase resource inequality
Cooperation is more likely when individuals can choose their interaction partner. However, here, the authors show that partner choice can increase resource inequality in a public goods game when people differ in resources and productivity needed for cooperation.
- Mirre Stallen
- , Luuk L. Snijder
- & Carsten K. W. De Dreu
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Article
| Open AccessDevelopment and validation of the pandemic fatigue scale
In this study the authors introduce a measure of pandemic fatigue and report the existence of, and changes in, pandemic fatigue during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also identify correlates of pandemic fatigue and show that those who experienced more pandemic fatigue were less likely to adhere to various health-protective behaviors.
- Lau Lilleholt
- , Ingo Zettler
- & Robert Böhm
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Article
| Open AccessTime-dependent memory transformation in hippocampus and neocortex is semantic in nature
Memories are transformed over time. Here, the authors show that this transformation is semantic in nature and linked to transformed event representations in neocortex and increased pattern reinstatement in the posterior hippocampus, while they find no credible evidence for a perceptual transformation.
- Valentina Krenz
- , Arjen Alink
- & Lars Schwabe