Reviews & Analysis

For patients affected by speech disorders, brain–machine-interface (BMI) devices could restore their ability to verbally communicate. In this work, we captured neural activity associated with internal speech — words said within the mind with no associated movement or audio output — and translated these cortical signals into text in real time.

Humans are unusually adept at endurance running, due in part to specialized muscle fibres and heat elimination by sweating. Cost–benefit analyses and an ethnohistorical survey of hunting methods suggest that these features could have evolved through the pursuit of evasive species until they are overcome with exhaustion and easily dispatched.

Long ties that bridge socially separate regions of networks are critical for the spread of contagions, such as innovations or adoptions of new norms. Contrary to previous thinking, long ties have now been found to accelerate social contagions, even for behaviours that involve the social reinforcement of adoption by network neighbours.

Our study successfully tracks salient distracting signals in high-frequency activity obtained from human intracranial recordings. We observed that the temporal lobe has a critical role in reacting to salient distractors, whereas the parietal and frontal cortices seem to be less important than previously thought.

Fast neuromodulator release was measured in patients undergoing awake brain surgery while they played an economic game with human and computer players. The findings show that dopamine and serotonin track social context and value statistics.

Whether conservatives or liberals have higher sensitivity towards underrepresentation depends on the target of the judgement: conservatives are shown to have higher thresholds than liberals for indicating bias against traditionally nondominant groups, whereas liberals have higher bias thresholds regarding dominant groups. However, such relationships weaken when the targets of bias are unknown or ideologically irrelevant to the observer, which emphasizes the context-dependency of such bias judgements.

Using large-scale global positioning system (GPS) mobility data, we examined the feasibility and societal impact of the ‘15-minute city’ model across US urban areas. Our findings highlight the environmental benefits of localized living but also its risk of intensifying socioeconomic segregation.

Leveraging over 2,000 data sessions from a citizen science website, this large-scale exploratory research study revealed demographic (age, sex and daily computer usage) and task features (task enjoyment and baseline movement times) that predicted the extent of successful sensorimotor adaptation in participants’ reaching movements after a visuomotor perturbation.

Aggregate demand for interpersonal skills in the Australian labour market has accelerated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, there has been a high degree of complementarity between remote work and demand for interpersonal skills during this period.