The visual recognition abilities of preschool children rival those of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models.

The V-JEPA system uses ordinary videos to understand the physics of the real world.

The V-JEPA system uses ordinary videos to understand the physics of the real world.

How a developing nervous system discovers meaning in complex sensory inputs has typically been examined separately for each sensory modality. Even as studies have uncovered modality-specific strategie...

YouTube video by Dwarkesh Patel

Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings

This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...

Objectives Novice meditators often struggle to recognise and intentionally disengage from self-referential thought during meditation. We investigated whether personalised high-precision neurofeedback (NF) training improves volitional disengagement from self-referential thought during meditation and enhances meditation’s outcomes. Method In a single-blind, controlled study, novices received 2 days of veridical (n = 20) or sham (n = 20) 7-T fMRI NF targeting posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) deactivation during meditation. After NF training, at-home meditation practice was monitored for 1 week, followed by an in-lab behavioural assessment. Results Both groups reported similar perceptions of NF contingency, performance, and expectancy (p > 0.05), suggesting effective participant blinding. PCC deactivation during NF-guided meditation was comparable across groups (p > 0.05). Veridical NF group showed significantly stronger negative functional coupling (d = 0.59) between PCC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), significantly greater mindful awareness (d = 0.41) and emotional well-being (d = 0.40) associated with 1-week practice, and significant correlation (r = 0.71, p < 0.01) between emotional well-being and PCC-DLPFC negative coupling. Conclusions These findings suggest that high-precision NF can improve novices’ ability to volitionally disengage from self-referential thought during meditation, thereby fostering greater mindful awareness in real-world practice and promoting emotional well-being. Preregistration This exploratory study was not preregistered.

Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.