Dream and daydream: differences and similarities

Did you know that daydreams reflect events from the previous two days and “night” dreams resemble a fictional plot?

Does your dog have social skills?

A study suggests that viewing the owner’s face works as a positive social reinforcement for dogs. Learn more about this and other surprising results about “man’s best friend”.

The behavioral coordination at the submovement level

In the scope of project 246/20 - The hidden rhythm of interpersonal (sub-)movement coordination, Alice Tomassini et al. published in the journal iScience, the paper “Interpersonal synchronization of movement intermittency”, with the following highlights...

Is the human being able to assess the emotinal authenticity of non-verbal vocalizations?

Tatiana Conde e Magro, supported by the BIAL Foundation in the scope of project 148/18 – Voice perception in the visually deprived brain: Behavioral and electrophysiological insights, concluded that humans are able to assess the emotional authenticity of non-verbal vocalizations in early stages of emotional processing. Furthermore, the study showed that the assessment of emotional authenticity is faster in laughter than in crying. The paper “The time course of emotional authenticity detection in nonverbal vocalizations” featuring these results was published in the journal Cortex.

The neuronal representation of the use of tools

Stéphanie Rossit, supported by the BIAL Foundation in the scope of project 184/14 – Decoding neural representations of human tool use from fMRI response patterns, identified the neural representations of how humans typically use tools. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that these representations occur even when the performance of the task does not require semantic processing. The paper “The role of the anterior temporal cortex in action: Evidence from fMRI multivariate searchlight analysis during real object grasping” featuring these results was published in the journal Scientific Reports.