This article is about the neuroscience of how fake news grabs our attention, produces false memories, and appeals to our emotions. “Highly emotionally provocative information stands a stronger chance of lingering in our minds and being incorporated into long-term memory banks.” "Fake news" is a relatively new term, but some people now see it as one of the biggest threats to democracy and free debate. But how is this going to work? At least some insight can be given by neuroscience. The first job of Fake News is to catch our attention, and novelty is key for that reason. Researchers Gordon Pennycook and David Rand have suggested that one of the reasons for the success of hyperpartisan claims is that they tend to be outlandish. Human beings have developed an extraordinary skill in a world full of surprises to easily identify and direct themselves towards unexpected knowledge or events. Novelty is an essential concept that underlies the behavioural neural bas
Recently, the Blue Brain Project has created a model that defines the brain as a structure built from multidimensional spaces and structures. This new study helps us better understand our brains and may even give us clues to answer questions such as where memories are made in our brain. The brain is an extremely complex organ, particularly the human brain, and science is still far from knowing all the aspects of its structure. Nonetheless, by using computer models, a team of scientists working on the Blue Brain Project are now working to better understand the brain. [Credit: EPFL’s Blue Brain] The latest model showed the brain as a multi-dimensional space and building structure. "We found a world we had never imagined," said neuroscientist Henry Markram, Blue Brain Project director and professor at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. These structures exist in numerous numbers, in the smallest fleck of our brain, up to the seventh dimension. There w