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Long ties that bridge socially separate regions of networks are critical for the spread of contagions, such as innovations or adoptions of new norms. Contrary to previous thinking, long ties have now been found to accelerate social contagions, even for behaviours that involve the social reinforcement of adoption by network neighbours.

This study examines individuals with autoimmune limbic encephalitis, a condition that impairs the hippocampus, to understand how they evaluate rewards and efforts in uncertain scenarios compared to healthy controls. The findings reveal that while patients with autoimmune limbic encephalitis retain their sensitivity to uncertainty, their capability to assess rewards and efforts is notably diminished when uncertainty is a factor.

The authors introduce Ouvrai, an open-source solution that facilitates the design and execution of remote virtual reality studies, capitalizing on the surge in virtual reality headset ownership.

How is contagion affected by changes to network structure? Recent work has claimed a ‘weakness of long ties’ for complex contagions that rely on social reinforcement, unlike biological contagions. Eckles et al. substantially revise this conclusion.

In this Article, Ma et al. show, across a series of experiments, that time and memorability (the probability of recalling a visual stimulus) mutually influence one another, suggesting that time is a feature of visual processing that is intrinsic to perceptual experience.

In support of an evolutionary model that links distaste, disgust and socio-moral processes, Gan et al. use functional magnetic resonance imaging to develop a neuromarker for subjective core disgust that generalizes to oral distaste and unfairness.

Using a combination of fMRI and lesion patient studies, Holton et al. show that human vmPFC causes goal perseveration during incremental goal pursuit.

In 653,790 individuals, this multi-ancestral meta-analysis of tobacco use disorder finds 461 potential risk genes and hundreds of associations with health outcomes, showcasing the utility of electronic health records for genetic research.

The combination of general anaesthesia and neuroimaging holds unique potential for catalysing integrative and translational discovery about human brains and consciousness. By spanning molecular, cognitive and clinical neuroscience, anaesthesia provides a bridge from molecules to mind across species.

This pre-registered systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis examined the effects of receiving touch for promoting mental and physical well-being, quantifying the efficacy of touch interventions for different ways of administration.

In this large-scale exome-wide association study, Deng, Wu, Yang, He et al. report genetic associations of protein-coding variants with neurodegenerative diseases and mental disorders, including for 50 new genes.

Researchers have a wide variety of choices when it comes to careers. Often, post-PhD, we leave academic research for industry. But it is also possible to transition back, when done carefully. In this how-to, I outline how to transition between industry and academic research and vice versa.

Our study successfully tracks salient distracting signals in high-frequency activity obtained from human intracranial recordings. We observed that the temporal lobe has a critical role in reacting to salient distractors, whereas the parietal and frontal cortices seem to be less important than previously thought.

This study uses a unique dataset with intracranial electroencephalography recordings from 18 neurosurgical patients performing a visual search task to uncover neuronal network dynamics and brain regions associated with attentional capture.

Plagiarism is never acceptable, but when is it appropriate for scholars to reuse their own words in published papers?

We all care about effect sizes. Yet, traditional ways of evaluating them (P < 0.05 and generic benchmarks) are failing us. We propose two paths forward: setting better, contextualized benchmarks or — more radically — letting go of benchmarks altogether. Both paths point to adjusted expectations, more detailed reporting and slow science.

Large language models can generate sophisticated text or code with little input from a user, which has the potential to impoverish our own writing and thinking skills. We need to understand the effect of this technology on our cognition and to decide whether this is what we want.

Given the increasing sophistication of virtual reality systems in providing immersive nature experiences, there is the potential for analogous health benefits to those that arise from real nature experiences. We call for research to better understand the human–nature–technology interaction to overcome potential pitfalls of the technology and design tailored virtual experiences that can deliver health outcomes and wellbeing across society.