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Nielsen et al. find lactose intolerance may link consuming dairy, nightmares, and poor sleep. Image credit: Micha HNBS.

Study Finds Association between Lactose Intolerance and Nightmares

Jul 1, 2025 by News Staff

In a new study, researchers questioned 1,082 students at MacEwan University about the quality of their sleep, their eating habits, and any perceived link...

The wearable patch can simultaneously and accurately track multiple emotional signals. Image credit: Yangbo Yuan / Penn State.

Newly-Developed Stretchable, Rechargeable Device Can Detect Real Emotions

Apr 23, 2025 by News Staff

The new hybrid device combines decoupled sensors with a flexible wireless powering and transmitting module for emotion recognition, according to a research...

Anauralia is the phenomenon of an absence of auditory sensory imagery -- not hearing anything in one’s inner ear. Image credit: Vat Loai.

Some People Can’t Imagine Sounds: Anauralia

Dec 19, 2024 by News Staff

Some people can’t imagine a dog barking or a police siren; songs can’t get stuck in their heads; they have no inner voices. Anauralia was proposed...

The frequency of emoji use varies across genders and relationship types. Image credit: Pete Linforth.

Study: People with Higher Emotional Intelligence Use Emojis More Frequently

Dec 5, 2024 by News Staff

Higher emotional intelligence is linked to more emoji use with friends, while avoidant attachment is associated with less emoji use with friends and dating...

Levin et al suggest that we could have more in common with our extraterrestrial neighbors than initially thought. Image credit: Fernando Ribas.

Alien Visitation Claims Are Widespread Societal Problem, Researcher Says

Sep 3, 2024 by The Conversation

Around a fifth of U.K. citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO. The figures...

Zwebner et al. investigated the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy effect wherein individuals’ facial appearance develops over time to resemble the social stereotypes associated with given names. Image credit: Zwebner et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2405334121.

Can Given Names Shape Individuals’ Facial Appearance?

Jul 30, 2024 by News Staff

Our given name is a social tag associated with us early in life. Prior research has shown that individuals’ facial appearance can be indicative of their...

Higher intakes of fruit are associated with a reduced risk of incident depression.

Higher Fruit Consumption Reduces Risk of Depression, Study Suggests

Jun 5, 2024 by News Staff

New research led by University of New South Wales scientists supports a role for fruit — but not vegetable — intake in protecting against depression. Higher...

The study sheds new light on the link between sleep deprivation and obesity. Image credit: Sweet Briar College.

Inadequate Sleep Impacts Our Daytime Emotional Lives, New Review Says

Dec 27, 2023 by News Staff

In a largely sleep-deprived society, quantifying the effects of sleep loss on emotion is critical for promoting psychological health. In a new systematic...

Mendieta et al. used fMRI to measure brain activity in fans of rival soccer teams during match play. This image shows the contrast of winning and losing in the ‘good fanatic brain.’ It shows in warm colors the activity related to a significant victory. The blue scale represents the activation related to a significant loss; this pattern is congruent with the Mentalization Network, which suggests a rationalization process of the pain evoked by the losing scenario. Image credit: Mendieta et al.

Neuroscientists Use Brain Scans of Soccer Fans to Study Fanaticism

Nov 22, 2023 by News Staff

Soccer is an excellent social affiliation model, promoting inclusivity, teamwork, community spirit, social change, and personal achievement. Still, the...

Lauren Scott & Brittany Florkiewicz show that cat facial signals correspond to different social functions, which have likely been influenced by domestication. Image credit: Sci.News / Makieni777 / Rise-a-mui / Alexas_Fotos / Dorothe / Vaclav Zavada / Artem Makarov / Daga Roszkowska / Birgit / Pasi Mammela.

Study: Domestic Cats Have 276 Distinct Facial Expressions

Nov 6, 2023 by Natali Anderson

In a new study published in the journal Behavioural Processes, researchers from the University of Kansas Medical Center and Lyon College documented the...

Lazaro et al. aimed to compare the reinforcing value and efficacy between food and leisure stimuli for domestic dogs by comparing rates of behavior when receiving access to either their top-preferred food or leisure items. The results indicate that, overall, dogs exhibit a stronger preference for and food is more likely to function as a reinforcer than leisure items for domestic dog’s behavior. Even when dogs had equal preference for both types of stimuli in preference assessments, they showed a higher response rate when working for their preferred food during progressive-ratio trials. Image credit: Congerdesign.

Pet Dogs Prefer Food Over Toys, New Study Shows

Oct 18, 2023 by News Staff

In a University of Florida-led study, scientists allowed pet dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) to pick their favorite food and favorite toy, then put them...

Jiang et al. used maternal separation (MS) as a stress model to investigate whether MS causes abnormal behavior in adolescence. Image credit: WOKANDAPIX.

Anxiety is Contagious, New Mouse Study Suggests

Oct 17, 2023 by News Staff

New research from Guangzhou University and South China Normal University reveals neural mechanisms underlying the transmission of adolescent anxiety to...

Ward et al. suggest that the presence of an odor can bias an observer’s decision of what their perceived version of a neutral gray is. Image credit: Kerstin Herrmann.

Study: Presence of Different Odors Influences How We Perceive Colors

Oct 11, 2023 by News Staff

Human brain constantly combines multisensory information from our surrounding environment. Odors for instance are often perceived with visual cues; these...

Problematic online usage and Internet addiction lack a refined classification. Using 796 questionnaires, Stangl et al. are the first to reveal a continuum ranging from casual users (i.e. older users) to addicts (i.e. digital natives) acknowledging five different severity levels of problematic online usage to Internet addiction. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

Scientists Introduce New Internet Addiction Spectrum

Oct 2, 2023 by News Staff

Researchers from the University of Surrey and elsewhere have found that young people (24 years and youger) spend an average of six hours a day online;...

Upper Paleolithic drawing of the partial outline of a horse that uses the natural edge of the wall of La Pasiega Cave to represent the back and head of the horse. Image credit: Izzy Wisher / Gobierno de Cantabria.

Pareidolia May Have Stimulated Paleolithic Humans to Make Cave Art

Sep 25, 2023 by News Staff

Durham University archaeologist Izzy Wisher and colleagues investigated whether pareidolia — a psychological phenomenon where people see meaningful...

University of Bath Ph.D. student Alexz Farrall with a PAWS ‘breathing’ ball. Image credit: University of Bath.

Shape-Changing Biofeedback-Based Ball May Help Improve Mental Health

Aug 31, 2023 by News Staff

University of Bath Ph.D. student Alexz Farrall has invented a soft ball that ‘personifies’ breath, expanding and contracting as a person breathes in...

Goh et al. show that silences can substitute for sounds in three prominent auditory illusions caused by event representation. Image credit: Finmiki.

Silence is Truly Heard, New Research Suggests

Jul 11, 2023 by News Staff

Do we only hear sounds? Or can we also hear silence? These questions are the subject of a centuries-old philosophical debate between two camps: the perceptual...

Habitual coffee consumers justify their life choices by arguing that they become more alert and increase motor and cognitive performance and efficiency; however, these subjective impressions still do not have a neurobiological correlation. Using functional connectivity approaches to study resting-state fMRI data in a group of habitual coffee drinkers, Picó-Pérez et al. show that coffee consumption decreased connectivity of the posterior default mode network (DMN) and between the somatosensory/motor networks and the prefrontal cortex, while the connectivity in nodes of the higher visual and the right executive control network (RECN) is increased after drinking coffee; the data also show that caffeine intake only replicated the impact of coffee on the posterior DMN, thus disentangling the neurochemical effects of caffeine from the experience of having a coffee. Image credit: Sci.News.

Study: Boost from Morning Coffee Can’t Be Replicated with Plain Caffeine

Jun 29, 2023 by News Staff

Plain caffeine only partially reproduces the effects of drinking a cup of coffee, activating areas of the brain that make you feel more alert but not the...

Using an interventional study in healthy, normal-weight participants, Thanarajah et al. demonstrate that, independent of body weight gain and alterations in metabolic markers, exposure to high-fat/high-sugar food: (i) reduces preferences for low-fat food, (ii) plays a critical role in up-regulating brain responses to anticipation and consumption of highly palatable, energy-dense food, and (iii) has a generalized effect on the neuronal encoding of prediction errors in the context of associative learning and independent of food rewards. Taken together, repeated consumption of high-fat/high-sugar relative to isocaloric low-fat/low-sugar food, and in the absence of changes in body weight or metabolic state, can rewire brain circuits and thereby induce neurobehavioral adaptations. Hence, changing the food environment and reducing the availability of energy-dense high-fat/high-sugar food items is pivotal to combating the obesity pandemic. Image credit: Thanarajah et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2023.02.015.

Daily Consumption of Sweet and Fatty Snacks Alters Our Reward Circuits: Study

Mar 23, 2023 by News Staff

Western diets rich in fat and sugar promote excess calorie intake and weight gain; however, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. To close this gap, researchers...