A new mathematical framework uncovers how the brain’s prefrontal cortex processes mixed signals to guide decision making, offering fresh insights for both clinical care and next-generation AI.

Simple choices can arise from diverse brain strategies, shedding light on the origins of individual variability

How do computational processes help us understand mental health disorders and precisely tailor treatments to each individual? In this episode of Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond, Aanya Kasera sits down with…

In May 2024, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego, reported that in a series of Turing tests, people could not distinguish the large language model GPT-4 from a human being. The year before, a Stanford-based group of researchers had GPT-4 take the bar exam – and the artificial intelligence passed. GPT-4…

Chronic stress, be it from the covid pandemic, conflict in the Middle East, burnout from work, or any number of reasons, is a leading trigger for mental health issues, like anxiety and depression. Yet, it’s unclear how some people manage to buck stress’ ill effects and are impervious of its insidious influence. Researchers at the Princeton…

For many heartbreaking diseases of the brain — dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and others — doctors can only treat the symptoms. Medical science does not have a cure.

Why? Because it’s difficult to cure what we don’t understand, and the human brain, with its billions of neurons connected by a hundred trillion synapses, is almost…

A new mathematical model offers a better explanation of how dopamine surges in the brain when receiving a reward. The findings from researchers at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute (PNI) may help improve both AI for smarter tech, which relies on similar principles underlying how dopamine is thought to impact reward learning. It might also…

For fruit flies, love is not blind. During courtship, a male fruit fly relies on his sense of vision to pursue a female fruit fly—if she is far away, he will speed up; if she is to the left, he will turn left; if she is close, he will serenade her with a complex acoustic signal generated by vibrating his wings. But how does the visual…

Our brain is bombarded with information every day. Imagine standing in Times Square in New York City, with its flood of sights, sounds, and smells. According to one estimate, we receive about 11 million bits of information per second, which is about the same amount of information needed to stream a high-definition movie. Acting in this world –…

New research from the Witten and Peña labs at PNI explores the possibility that food and social motivations can interact at a cellular level.Animals are motivated by a combination of external and internal factors, which together promote behaviors that…

Research led by PNI's Andy Leifer has provided thus far the most comprehensive description of how signals flow through the brain. The findings could provide new information that helps advance our understanding of how neurons work together as interacting components to process information.

Assistant Professor Fenna Krienen participated in an international consortium, funded by the BRAIN Initiative, to uncover cellular diversity in human and nonhuman primate brains.