A new study in Nature Human Behavior by neuroscientists at Baylor University and the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School reveals that digital technologies actually are associated with reduced cognitive decline versus the assumed correlation to dementia. 

In many careers, a person must learn foundational skills before advancing deeper into their profession. A recent paper in Nature Human Behavior mapped the dependency relationships between workplace skills, identifying a nested structure in many professions, where advanced skills depend on prior mastery of broader skills. This nestedness, they found, has significant implications for wage inequality and career mobility in increasingly complex labor markets.

Conservative people in America appear to distrust science more broadly than previously thought. Not only do they distrust science that does not correspond to their worldview. Compared to liberal Americans, their trust is also lower in fields that contribute to economic growth and productivity. Short interventions aimed at strengthening trust have little effect. This is apparent from new research by social psychologists at the University of Amsterdam, which has now been published in Nature Human Behaviour.

From birth, human survival depends on the ability to engage with others. This ability, which is essential for development, seems to be impaired very early on in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), who show limited interest in social stimuli from their first year of life. To understand the neurobiological basis of this phenomenon, scientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) combined data from clinical and animal research. They identified a defect in a communication pathway between two brain structures that prevents rapid redirection of attention, a key mechanism for decoding social interactions. These results, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, pave the way for better prediction of development and more targeted interventions.

A simple method of brain stimulation has been shown to change how people make decisions. These were the findings of a new study by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), which was published in the "Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience". The investigation used transcranial direct current stimulation, which is an established method in research and therapy.