Cognition

Extraordinary claims about the small-brained human relative Homo naledi challenge prevailing view of cognitive evolution

Adverse early childhood experience leaves persisting traces in brain structure, highlighting the importance of preventive measures for healthy brain development

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

Plato was right: newborns do math

Does this all feel a little familiar? Called déjà vu, that sensation may be your brain correcting its own errors

A new finding that humans can correctly interpret the gestures of chimps and bonobos adds togrowing research that suggests that human language may have evolved from a dictionary of hand and body signals

Letters to the editor for the June 2022 issue of Scientific American

Anticipated blackness tricks your pupils into reacting

Her majesty’s invisibility cloak is a matter of perspective

Lowered conscious reasoning can aid sound-pattern recognition

A gaming cartographer discovers an uncharted perceptual realm

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