Visual perception
How visual signals become representations of objects, colors, and scenes.
11 problemsBrain and cognition
Neural representations, memory, and cognitive functions.
Explore Brain and cognition
Hearing and smell
How sounds and odors become recognizable sensory experiences.
5 problemsMemory and learning
How knowledge is retained, recalled and reused.
16 problemsSelf and social cognition
Understanding your own actions and judgments, and the minds of other people.
7 problemsReasoning and decision making
How people form judgments, compare options and regulate goal-directed thought.
8 problemsMovement and the body
Movement, bodily signals, timing and touch.
6 problemsCollections
Browse collectionsConsciousness and sleep
Experience, dreams, and the roles of sleep: connected subjects with distinct questions and evidence.
4 problemsLearning and intelligence
Human cognition and machine learning face different questions about learning, generalization, and goals.
32 problemsPerception and speech
How does the brain combine senses and build fluent speech?
23 problemsA few problems to explore
56 totalDreaming
A sleeping mind can build vivid worlds. Do those experiences perform a function, reflect other useful processes, or do both?
Functions of sleep
Sleep is essential, but why do its benefits require a state in which an animal becomes less responsive to its surroundings?
Memory engrams
Experiences leave lasting changes in the brain. How do those changes form a memory that can be preserved, revised, and retrieved later?
Neural coding
Neural activity carries information, but which aspects of that activity does the brain actually use? A pattern readable by an analyst need not be the pattern used for behavior.
Perceptual binding
Vision assigns colors, shapes, and movements to objects. How do distributed neural representations support those assignments without mixing features from different objects?
Human general intelligence
Performance across different cognitive tasks is often related. Which brain mechanisms help explain that shared variation and the many abilities that do not reduce to it?