To solve diverse real-world tasks, the brain must flexibly switch between task rules and adjust computations. Recent advances in analyzing neural data and modeling neural networks have revealed their ...

In a new computational analysis of previous work, this study shows that a control-free mechanism better accounts for value-based decisions than an account that assumes top-down control invigorating th...

Li et al. present a microLED-based mesoscale optogenetic system for centimeter-scale, million-pixel primate cortical stimulation. Optogenetically evoked saccades with accurate retinotopic organization...

Task rules critically shape how neural populations encode information and generalize across cognitive demands, yet the mechanisms linking rule structure, neural dynamics, and behavior remain poorly un...

Perceptual decisions unfold over time, requiring neural circuits to evaluate sensory evidence, track elapsed time, and commit to an action. To investigate how these computations are distributed across...

A neuroscientist’s bold proposal for tackling one of the greatest challenges of our time—brain and mental illnesses

Humans and other primates can robustly report whether they’ve seen specific images before, even when those images are extremely similar to ones they’ve previously seen. Multiple lines of evidence sugg...

The ability to decipher the structure of sensory input is crucial for building an accurate internal model of one’s environment. Humans can not only extract and integrate the sensory properties of stim...

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At the end of a decision based on evidence accumulation, the neural representation of the accumulation is invariant across decisions. Zylberberg and Shadlen show, nonetheless, that accuracy can be dec...

We often exert greater cognitive resources (i.e., listening effort) to understand speech under challenging acoustic conditions. This mechanism can ...

Viewing an object in the external world evokes a rich variety of concepts associated with it in the human mind, such as whether it is animate or not, man-made or not, big or small, and countless other...

At the core of intelligence is proficiency in solving new problems, including those that differ dramatically from problems seen before. Problem-solving, in turn, depends on goal-directed generation of...

Mergan et al. conducted an fMRI-guided electrophysiology study in macaque prefrontal face patches. They found that, although receptive fields and basic selectivity in these face patches resemble those...

How do human brains represent tasks of varying structure? The lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) flexibly represents task information. However, principles that shape lPFC representational geometry remai...

Neural activity in sensory cortex is modulated by behavioral and cognitive factors, and this modulation is thought to contribute to the selection o...

Sequential sampling models assume that people make speeded decisions by gradually accumulating noisy information until a threshold of evidence is reached. In cognitive science, one such model—the diff...