Researchers used visual threat manipulation in the virtual reality environment and thermal stimulation to investigate how the brain perceives pain. They found that the brain perceives pain more strongly when the perceived pain is out of alignment with reality. In particular, pain was amplified when unexpected events occurred.

Pain perception can vary greatly. Sometimes, we feel pain more intensely than expected due to an injury or physical ailment but may feel less intense pain at other similar instances. This variability indicates that our perception of pain is highly dependent on our expectations and uncertainty.

Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain how the brain perceives pain.

One is the Estimate Hypothesis, where the brain estimat...

Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly large language models like GPT-4, has shown impressive performance on reasoning tasks. But does AI truly understand abstract concepts, or is it just mimicking patterns? A new study from the University of Amsterdam and the Santa Fe Institute reveals that while GPT models perform well on some analogy tasks, they fall short when the problems are altered, highlighting key weaknesses in AI’s reasoning capabilities. The work is published in Transactions on Machine Learning Research.

Analogical reasoning is the ability to draw a comparison between two different things based on their similarities in certain aspects...

Is NASA still Moonbound, or will the next giant leap mean skipping straight to Mars?

Speculation is mounting that the Trump administration may scale back or cancel NASA’s Artemis missions following the departure of a key official and Boeing’s plans to lay off hundreds of employees working on its lunar rocket.

Late Wednesday, NASA abruptly announced the retirement of longtime associate administrator Jim Free, effective Saturday.

No reason was given for Free’s departure after his 30-year rise to NASA’s top civil-service position...

In a leap forward for quantum computing, a Microsoft team led by UC Santa Barbara physicists on Wednesday unveiled an eight-qubit topological quantum processor, the first of its kind. The chip, built as a proof-of-concept for the scientists’ design, opens the door to the development of the long-awaited topological quantum computer.

“We’ve got a bunch of stuff that we’ve been keeping under wraps that we’re dropping all at once now,” said Microsoft Station Q Director Chetan Nayak, a professor of physics at UCSB and a Technical Fellow for Quantum Hardware at Microsoft...