Cognition
What Happens when People with Dementia Commit Crimes?
When criminal behavior overlaps with degenerative cognitive disease, the justice system often falters
Cognition3960 articles archived since 1845
Cognition
Hearing Aids Stave Off Cognitive Decline
Hearing aids may help maintain better brain functions in older people and better health overall.
Cognition
Humans Can Spot Tiny Numerical Differences
Where is the line between knowing and guessing?
Animals
Why Do Dogs Tilt Their Head to the Side?
The attentive and endearing doggy head tilt might indicate your pup is trying to process what you’re saying
Cognition
Distracted Driving Is More Dangerous Than People Realize, New Research Shows
Multitasking can occupy attention longer than people anticipate
Cognition
What Life in Barbie’s Dazzlingly Pink World Would Do to Her Brain—And Yours
The Barbie movie’s plastic pink world might not be that fantastic in real life
Cognition
What That Jazz Beat Tells Us about Hearing and The Brain
Very small delays in swing jazz point to our evolution as a supremely auditory species.
Cognition
To Stay Sharp as You Age, Learn New Skills
Older people show significant cognitive benefits from learning, provided they have the opportunity to do so
Animals
Bees Are Astonishingly Good at Making Decisions
Computer modeling explains a key facet of bees’ decision-making skills—something only seen previously in humans and other primates
Anthropology
This Small-Brained Human Species May Have Buried Its Dead, Controlled Fire and Made Art
Extraordinary claims about the small-brained human relative Homo naledi challenge prevailing view of cognitive evolution
Cognition
Adversity in Early Childhood Can Impair Brain Development
Adverse early childhood experience leaves persisting traces in brain structure, highlighting the importance of preventive measures for healthy brain development
Artificial Intelligence
AI Can Re-create What You See from a Brain Scan
Image-generating AI is getting better at re-creating what people are looking at from their fMRI data. But this isn’t mind reading—yet
Cognition
Babies Are Born with an Innate Number Sense
Plato was right: newborns do math
Cognition
What Causes Déjà Vu?
Does this all feel a little familiar? Called déjà vu, that sensation may be your brain correcting its own errors
Cognition
Humans Can Correctly Guess the Meaning of Chimp Gestures
A new finding that humans can correctly interpret the gestures of chimps and bonobos adds to growing research that suggests that human language may have evolved from a dictionary of hand and body signals...
Cognition
Readers Respond to the June 2022 Issue
Letters to the editor for the June 2022 issue of Scientific American
Cognition
Good (and Bad) Ways to Help a Dog Afraid of Fireworks
You are more important than you think
Cognition
Tired Adults May Learn Language like Children Do
Lowered conscious reasoning can aid sound-pattern recognition
Cognition
People Who Jump to Conclusions Show Other Kinds of Thinking Errors
Belief in conspiracy theories and overconfidence are two tendencies linked to hasty thinking
Cognition
Can Lab-Grown Brains Become Conscious?
A handful of experiments are raising questions about whether clumps of cells and disembodied brains could be sentient and how scientists would know if they were
