Nature Neuroscience - Neurons that respond emergently to illusory contours drive pattern completion in V1. Pattern completion in lower cortical areas may therefore mediate perceptual inference by...

Study identifies entirely new suite of enzymes that can make psilocybin

Giorgia Lupi and her team at Pentagram have created a data-driven animation for the MTA called A Data Love Letter to the Subway. More from Lupi (who calls this an “absolute dream project”): The project, “A Data L

In a recent study, Goueytes and colleagues combined computational modeling with intracranial recordings to dissect the neural basis of confidence and changes of mind. They reveal a temporally organize...

Beliefs in conspiracy theories are seemingly hard to dispute through facts. Researchers have partly attributed this resistance to certain information processing styles that are associated with cons...

Neural mechanisms underlying flexible learning and decision-making are not fully understood. Using single-cell calcium imaging, authors here found that neurons in orbitofrontal and secondary motor cortex exhibit complementary roles in reward learning, with neurons in the former exerting a sustained role in conditions of uncertainty.

When faced with many options to choose from, humans typically need to explore the utility of new choice options. People with an autism diagnosis or elevated autism traits are thought to avoid exploring such unknown options, but it remains unclear how autism affects exploration in decision spaces with many options. In a large online sample (N = 588), we investigated the impact of autism diagnosis or elevated autism traits on exploration behavior during value-based decision-making in vast decision spaces. We used a 121-armed bandit with spatially correlated choice options, and a dedicated computational model to disentangle generalization, uncertainty-guided exploration, and random exploration strategies. Our findings show that participants with a self-reported autism diagnosis were less likely to explore novel choice options and more likely to exploit known high-value options. Computational modeling suggests they engaged in less uncertainty-driven exploration but exhibited equal random exploration and generalization strategies. Interestingly, among non-diagnosed participants, people with elevated autism traits did not explore less. This study relies on self-reported autism diagnoses and trait measures collected online. This may limit the generalizability of the findings to clinically verified or more diverse autism populations. Our findings highlight important differences in exploration strategies between clinical and subclinical populations and emphasize the importance of cognitive modeling and using vast decision spaces to better understand autism.

npj Complexity - The complexity of misinformation extends beyond virus and warfare analogies

Two EEG studies in healthy human adults suggest that choice history and stimulus probability-induced biases in somatosensory perception are reflected in distinct prestimulus beta power modulations across distinct cortical regions.