Reviews & Analysis

Our study successfully tracks salient distracting signals in high-frequency activity obtained from human intracranial recordings. We observed that the temporal lobe has a critical role in reacting to salient distractors, whereas the parietal and frontal cortices seem to be less important than previously thought.

Fast neuromodulator release was measured in patients undergoing awake brain surgery while they played an economic game with human and computer players. The findings show that dopamine and serotonin track social context and value statistics.

Whether conservatives or liberals have higher sensitivity towards underrepresentation depends on the target of the judgement: conservatives are shown to have higher thresholds than liberals for indicating bias against traditionally nondominant groups, whereas liberals have higher bias thresholds regarding dominant groups. However, such relationships weaken when the targets of bias are unknown or ideologically irrelevant to the observer, which emphasizes the context-dependency of such bias judgements.

Using large-scale global positioning system (GPS) mobility data, we examined the feasibility and societal impact of the ‘15-minute city’ model across US urban areas. Our findings highlight the environmental benefits of localized living but also its risk of intensifying socioeconomic segregation.

Leveraging over 2,000 data sessions from a citizen science website, this large-scale exploratory research study revealed demographic (age, sex and daily computer usage) and task features (task enjoyment and baseline movement times) that predicted the extent of successful sensorimotor adaptation in participants’ reaching movements after a visuomotor perturbation.

Aggregate demand for interpersonal skills in the Australian labour market has accelerated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, there has been a high degree of complementarity between remote work and demand for interpersonal skills during this period.

Using a large dataset of individuals from Early Neolithic Europe, we analysed DNA, diet and pathology to determine which factors most affected skeletal height. We found that the male–female height differences in north-central Europe were exceptionally large, and that the short stature of female individuals in this region possibly reflects a cultural preference to support male individuals. By contrast, in the Mediterranean, it is male individuals who were short, probably as a consequence of environmental stress.

As screen time becomes more and more present in the lives of children, parents need the best information to help to guide their decisions. By collating all of the meta-analytic evidence from across the field, we hope to provide that evidence.

Trends in interpersonal violence have been reconstructed using data on violence-related injuries from more than 3,500 excavated skeletons from the ancient Middle East. Documenting variations in the patterns of violence in this key historical setting broadens perspectives on the long history of conflict.

We identified two components of honesty — ‘belief speaking’ and ‘fact speaking’ — in public-facing communication by US politicians. For Republicans, belief speaking is strongly associated with the sharing of untrustworthy information. Fact speaking is associated with the sharing of more reliable information, irrespective of party affiliation.

We proposed a confidence metric and analysed data from five large surveys that spanned 30 years in Europe and the USA. We found that both overconfidence and negative attitudes towards science peak at intermediate knowledge levels.

We trained an artificial intelligence (AI) system to recommend different interactions and connections between humans playing a group game together. Through trial and error, the AI system learned to take an encouraging approach to uncooperative individuals, keeping them engaged with the group and boosting cooperation levels for everyone.

Zero-COVID-19 strategies used hard lockdown to save human lives. Our study used modern policy evaluation tools and high-quality longitudinal, nationally representative data and found that the lives saved during Melbourne’s hard 111-day lockdown came at a high cost to parents of young dependent children, and in particular mothers, as the lockdown continued.

Climate change and rising temperatures are expected to increase food insecurity globally. An analysis of 150 countries shows that heat increases food insecurity within days of exposure. Mediation analyses indicate this may be linked to heat-related effects on the capability to earn income and afford food. Low-income areas and areas with prevalent agricultural or vulnerable employment are most affected.

Despite widespread concerns that social media exacerbate incivility and partisan polarization, few solutions to address this issue have been identified. We developed a mobile chat platform to study how varying levels of anonymity shape conversations about politics. In contrast to the popular wisdom, we find that carefully structured anonymous online conversations can reduce polarization.

Analogical reasoning is a hallmark of human intelligence, as it enables us to flexibly solve new problems without extensive practice. By using a wide range of tests, we demonstrate that GPT-3, a large-scale artificial intelligence language model, is capable of solving difficult analogy problems at a level comparable to human performance.

A healthy lifestyle is associated with longer total life expectancy and a larger proportion of remaining years lived without a major noncommunicable disease in the Chinese population. Public health initiatives that promote healthy lifestyles may have a role in realizing the Healthy China 2030 strategic plan.

A study of 30,000 parents across 6 international cohorts reveals that parental genes are linked with the investments that parents make in their offspring, from adopting more healthy behaviours during pregnancy to leaving wealth to adult children. The findings suggest that parental alleles that are not transmitted can affect children through influencing the environments that parents create for their children over the course of their lives.

Responses to survey questionnaires are a vital component of nearly all social and behavioural research. This study examined item nonresponse behaviour across 109 questionnaire items from 360,628 individuals in the UK Biobank using phenotypic and genetic data. These results were used to build an improved understanding of how item nonresponse might lead to bias in genetic studies in general.

The spatiotemporal dynamics of the brain have an essential role in how we perceive, decide and behave. Interacting spiral waves are now seen, from functional magnetic resonance imaging brain recordings, to serve as a mechanism for organizing spatiotemporal activity across the whole cortex. Further, these waves enable flexible reconfiguration of task-driven brain activity.