Cognitive Science

The latest breakthroughs, innovations, and cool happenings at the cutting edge of the world of cognitive science. Updated daily.

Collective future thinking at a time of geopolitical tension

People in many Western countries hold a dim view of their collective future, a negativity bias not universally shared but related to societal factors, such as country well-being, nationalism, and news coverage. An optimistic outlook should be cultivated to promote civic engagement and constructive policymaking at this time of geopolitical tension. Read Full Article (External […]

Published on March 13, 2025

Conceptual Combination in Large Language Models: Uncovering Implicit Relational Interpretations in Compound Words With Contextualized Word Embeddings

Abstract Large language models (LLMs) have been proposed as candidate models of human semantics, and as such, they must be able to account for conceptual combination. This work explores the ability of two LLMs, namely, BERT-base and Llama-2-13b, to reveal the implicit meaning of existing and novel compound words. According to psycholinguistic theories, understanding the […]

Published on March 13, 2025

On the origin of memory neurons in the human hippocampus

The hippocampus is essential for episodic memory, yet its coding mechanism remains debated. In humans, two main theories have been proposed: one suggests that concept neurons represent specific elements of an episode, while another posits a conjunctive code, where index neurons code the entire episode. Here, we integrate new findings of index neurons in humans […]

Published on March 5, 2025