2021 Top 25 Social Sciences and Human Behaviour Articles

Research highlights

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  Psychological characteristics associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and resistance in Ireland and the United Kingdom

  Hesitancy and resistance towards vaccination is a challenge for public health. Here the authors determine psychological characteristics associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy or resistance attitudes in the UK and Ireland.

  • Jamie Murphy
  • Frédérique Vallières
  • Philip Hyland

  ArticleOpen Access4 Jan 2021 Nature Communications
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  Policy assessments for the carbon emission flows and sustainability of Bitcoin blockchain operation in China

  The growing energy consumption and carbon emissions of Bitcoin mining could potentially undermine global sustainability efforts. Here, the authors show the annual energy consumption of the Bitcoin blockchain in China is expected to peak in 2024 at 296.59 Twh and generate 130.50 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

  • Shangrong Jiang
  • Yuze Li
  • Shouyang Wang

  ArticleOpen Access6 Apr 2021 Nature Communications
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  Potentially long-lasting effects of the pandemic on scientists

  The pandemic has caused disruption to many aspects of scientific research. In this Comment the authors describe the findings from surveys of scientists between April 2020 and January 2021, which suggests there was a decline in new projects started in that time.

  • Jian Gao
  • Yian Yin
  • Dashun Wang

  CommentOpen Access26 Oct 2021 Nature Communications
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  Unsupervised deep learning identifies semantic disentanglement in single inferotemporal face patch neurons

  Little is known about the brain’s computations that enable the recognition of faces. Here, the authors use unsupervised deep learning to show that the brain disentangles faces into semantically meaningful factors, like age or the presence of a smile, at the single neuron level.

  • Irina Higgins
  • Le Chang
  • Matthew Botvinick

  ArticleOpen Access9 Nov 2021 Nature Communications
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  An actionable anti-racism plan for geoscience organizations

  Racism thrives in geoscience. We present an antiracism plan to support the recruitment, retention and success of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in geoscience. Our action plan can be adapted by any organization to remove barriers to participation for all marginalized geoscientists.

  • Hendratta N. Ali
  • Sarah L. Sheffield
  • Blair Schneider

  PerspectiveOpen Access22 Jun 2021 Nature Communications
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  Neutral bots probe political bias on social media

  Social media platforms moderating misinformation have been accused of political bias. Here, the authors use neutral social bots to show that, while there is no strong evidence for such a bias, the content to which Twitter users are exposed depends strongly on the political leaning of early Twitter connections.

  • Wen Chen
  • Diogo Pacheco
  • Filippo Menczer

  ArticleOpen Access22 Sep 2021 Nature Communications
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  Individual differences in information-seeking

  Information-seeking is important for learning, social behaviour and decision making. Here the authors investigate factors that associate with individual differences in information-seeking behaviour.

  • Christopher. A. Kelly
  • Tali Sharot

  ArticleOpen Access3 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  Lack of consideration of sex and gender in COVID-19 clinical studies

  Sex and gender have been associated with differences in SARS-CoV-2 incidence and clinical outcomes and therefore warrant consideration in study designs. Here, the authors assess registered and published clinical COVID-19 studies and find that sex-disaggregated analyses are infrequently presented or planned.

  • Emer Brady
  • Mathias Wullum Nielsen
  • Sabine Oertelt-Prigione

  ArticleOpen Access6 Jul 2021 Nature Communications
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  Optimal COVID-19 quarantine and testing strategies

  Safely reducing the necessary duration of quarantine for COVID-19 could lessen the economic impacts of the pandemic. Here, the authors demonstrate that testing on exit from quarantine is more effective than testing on entry, and can enable quarantine to be reduced from fourteen to seven days.

  • Chad R. Wells
  • Jeffrey P. Townsend
  • Alison P. Galvani

  ArticleOpen Access7 Jan 2021 Nature Communications
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  Brain network coupling associated with cognitive performance varies as a function of a child’s environment in the ABCD study

  Previous research suggests that, for children and adults, there is an association between better performance on cognitive tests and less functional connectivity between two brain networks. Here, the authors find that this association does not hold in a sample of children from households in poverty, highlighting the need for more diverse samples to incorporate a range of childhood environments in developmental cognitive neuroscience.

  • Monica E. Ellwood-Lowe
  • Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
  • Silvia A. Bunge

  ArticleOpen Access10 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  mTOR-related synaptic pathology causes autism spectrum disorder-associated functional hyperconnectivity

  Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterised by synaptic surplus and atypical functional connectivity. Here, the authors show that synaptic pathology in Tsc2 haploinsufficient mice is associated with autism-like behavior and cortico-striatal hyperconnectivity, and that analogous functional hyperconnectivity signatures can be linked to mTOR-pathway dysfunction in subgroups of children with idiopathic ASD.

  • Marco Pagani
  • Noemi Barsotti
  • Alessandro Gozzi

  ArticleOpen Access19 Oct 2021 Nature Communications
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  Cognitive functions and underlying parameters of human brain physiology are associated with chronotype

  How being a “morning person” or “evening person” affects human cognition and brain physiology is not well understood. Here the authors show evidence of an association of chronotype with cognitive functions and related physiological parameters.

  • Mohammad Ali Salehinejad
  • Miles Wischnewski
  • Michael A. Nitsche

  ArticleOpen Access3 Aug 2021 Nature Communications
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  Deep neural network models reveal interplay of peripheral coding and stimulus statistics in pitch perception

  The neural and computational mechanisms underpinning pitch perception remain unclear. Here, the authors trained deep neural networks to estimate the fundamental frequency of sounds and found that human pitch perception depends on precise spike timing in the auditory nerve, but is also adapted to the statistical tendencies of natural sounds.

  • Mark R. Saddler
  • Ray Gonzalez
  • Josh H. McDermott

  ArticleOpen Access14 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  Sources of confidence in value-based choice

  The authors show that metacognitive awareness of choice certainty is closely linked to endogenous attentional states that guide decision behaviour.

  • Jeroen Brus
  • Helena Aebersold
  • Rafael Polania

  ArticleOpen Access17 Dec 2021 Nature Communications
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  CDH2 mutation affecting N-cadherin function causes attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in humans and mice

  Molecular mechanisms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are not fully understood. Here the authors demonstrate a mutation in CDH2, encoding N-cadherin, that is associated with ADHD, and in a mouse model, delineate molecular electrophysiological characteristics associated with this mutation.

  • D. Halperin
  • A. Stavsky
  • O. S. Birk

  ArticleOpen Access26 Oct 2021 Nature Communications
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  The pupil responds spontaneously to perceived numerosity

  Rapid and spontaneous estimation of number is observed in many animals. Here the authors show that perceived number of items modulates the pupillary light response in humans, confirming its spontaneous nature, and introducing pupillometry as a tool to study numerical cognition.

  • Elisa Castaldi
  • Antonella Pomè
  • Paola Binda

  ArticleOpen Access12 Oct 2021 Nature Communications
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  Infant gut microbiome composition is associated with non-social fear behavior in a pilot study

  Experimental manipulation of the gut microbiome in animal models impacts fear behaviours. Here, the authors show in a pilot study that features of the human infant gut microbiome are associated with non-social fear behaviours during a laboratory based assessment.

  • Alexander L. Carlson
  • Kai Xia
  • Rebecca C. Knickmeyer

  ArticleOpen Access2 Jun 2021 Nature Communications
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  Linear reinforcement learning in planning, grid fields, and cognitive control

  Models of decision making have so far been unable to account for how humans’ choices can be flexible yet efficient. Here the authors present a linear reinforcement learning model which explains both flexibility, and rare limitations such as habits, as arising from efficient approximate computation

  • Payam Piray
  • Nathaniel D. Daw

  ArticleOpen Access16 Aug 2021 Nature Communications
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  Predicting lapses of attention with sleep-like slow waves

  Attentional lapses occur in many forms such as mind-wandering or mindblanking. Here the authors show different types of attentional lapse are accompanied by slow waves, neural activity that is characteristic of transitions into sleep.

  • Thomas Andrillon
  • Angus Burns
  • Naotsugu Tsuchiya

  ArticleOpen Access29 Jun 2021 Nature Communications
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  Shifting parental beliefs about child development to foster parental investments and improve school readiness outcomes

  Parents’ investments in their children are a critical input in the production of early skills, yet those investments differ across socioeconomic backgrounds. Here the authors show that variations in parental beliefs about the impact of such investments can be one of the sources of investment disparities, and report interventions that can potentially shift those beliefs.

  • John A. List
  • Julie Pernaudet
  • Dana L. Suskind

  ArticleOpen Access1 Oct 2021 Nature Communications
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  Partially overlapping spatial environments trigger reinstatement in hippocampus and schema representations in prefrontal cortex

  The authors examine how we differentiate highly similar places from each other. They provide evidence for complementary neural mechanisms in the human hippocampus and prefrontal cortex involved in processing interfering and common elements important to remembering places that we have visited.

  • Li Zheng
  • Zhiyao Gao
  • Arne D. Ekstrom

  ArticleOpen Access28 Oct 2021 Nature Communications
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  Neural and computational mechanisms of momentary fatigue and persistence in effort-based choice

  The willingness to exert effort into demanding tasks often declines over time through fatigue. Here the authors provide a computational account of the moment-to-moment dynamics of fatigue and its impact on effort-based choices, and reveal the neural mechanisms that underlie such computations.

  • Tanja Müller
  • Miriam C. Klein-Flügge
  • Matthew A. J. Apps

  ArticleOpen Access28 Jul 2021 Nature Communications
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  Inequality is rising where social network segregation interacts with urban topology

  Not much is known about the joint relationships between social network structure, urban geography, and inequality. Here, the authors analyze an online social network and find that the fragmentation of social networks is significantly higher in towns in which residential neighborhoods are divided by physical barriers such as rivers and railroads.

  • Gergő Tóth
  • Johannes Wachs
  • Balázs Lengyel

  ArticleOpen Access18 Feb 2021 Nature Communications
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  Finding positive meaning in memories of negative events adaptively updates memory

  Finding positive meaning in past negative events is associated with enhanced mental health. Here the authors show this adaptively updates memory, leading to enhanced positive emotion and content at future retrieval, which remains two months later.

  • Megan E. Speer
  • Sandra Ibrahim
  • Mauricio R. Delgado

  ArticleOpen Access15 Nov 2021 Nature Communications
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  How social relationships shape moral wrongness judgments

  Moral judgments depend on relational context, with different normative cooperative expectations – relational norms – embedded in different social relationships, such as parent-child, romantic partners, siblings, or acquaintances. Here, the authors show how relational norms for care, hierarchy, reciprocity, and mating are embedded in a set of everyday social relationships in the United States, and use this information to predict out-of-sample moral judgments in relational context.

  • Brian D. Earp
  • Killian L. McLoughlin
  • Molly J. Crockett

  ArticleOpen Access1 Oct 2021 Nature Communications