The growing field of social neuroscience is reliant on the development of robust, ecologically valid paradigms for simulating social interaction and measuring social cognition in highly controlled laboratory settings. Perspective taking is a key component of social cognition, and accordingly several paradigms aimed at measuring perspective taking exist. A relatively novel paradigm is the ball detection task, in which participants and a virtual agent form independent beliefs about the presence of a target stimulus behind an occluder. Previous studies have shown that incongruent trials (in which the participant's and the agent's beliefs differ) affect participant reaction times and elicit increased neural activity in the so-called mentalizing network. This paradigm has important advantages over previous ones, in that experimental conditions can be fully randomized, and ceiling effects are not found even for adult populations. Here, we combined this paradigm with a stress induction and a nonstressful control ...

People with schizophrenia often persist in their beliefs and strategies even when evidence suggests they are wrong.

After submitting your graduate school applications, the next step is the interview, which may happen in-person, by phone, or via video conference. The interview process enables both the graduate program to assess prospective candidates and candidates to learn more about prospective research communities.

Laura Terry is a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. Terry talks about the path her career has taken since her PhD program, and what her daily responsibilities are as a consultant.

As neuroscientists, we try to understand how billions of neurons work together to perform either simple daily tasks, such as coordinated walking, or more complex ones, such as learning and memory.

Susan Amara and Sheena Josselyn share the advice and perspective they've gained from years of experience in this Q&A.

The K-complex represents one of the largest events recorded in the human cortex. It occurs during non-REM sleep as an isolated downstate, which may arise spontaneously or be evoked in response to a sensory stimulus. In this study, we sought to characterize the basic but essential spatial and temporal dynamics of the K-complex across the human cortex using bipolar stereoencephalographic (SEEG) recordings.

Andrea Bauman-Carnegie is the director of administrative operations for the Center for Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She talks about her career path from her PhD program at Vanderbilt University.

Sheena Josselyn shares her approach to bringing up implicit or explicit biases with friends and colleagues in this Q&A.

The neural network, including the interstitial nucleus of Cajal (INC), functions as an oculomotor neural integrator involved in the control of vertical gaze holding. Impairment of the vestibulocerebellum (VC), including the flocculus (FL), has been shown to affect vertical gaze holding, indicating that the INC cooperates with the VC in controlling this function. However, a network between the INC and VC has not been identified. In this study, we aimed to obtain anatomical evidence of a neural pathway from the INC to the VC (the INC-VC pathway) in rats. Injection of dextran-conjugated Alexa 488 or adeno-associated virus 2-retro (AAV2retro) expressing GFP into the FL or another VC region (uvula/nodulus) did not reveal any retrogradely labeled neurons in the INC, suggesting that INC neurons do not project directly to the VC. Rabies virus-based transsynaptic tracing experiments revealed that the INC-VC pathway is mediated via synaptic connections with the prepositus hypoglossi nucleus (PHN) and medial vestibul...