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Sleep studies enter the real world

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 11 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02130-8

Memory for details fades over time, yet retaining the spatiotemporal associations inherent to our individual experiences may be adaptively relevant. Using an art tour as an experimental setting, Diamond, Simpson and colleagues shed light on the role of sleep in shaping the long-term retention of episodic memory for real-world events.

Semantic embeddings reveal and address taxonomic incommensurability in psychological measurement

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 11 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-024-02089-y

Taxonomic incommensurability highlights the difficulty of comparing scientific theories due to differing concepts and methods. This study uses language models to create semantic embeddings of psychometric items and scales, aiding in predicting empirical relations and clarifying psychological taxonomies.

Sleep selectively and durably enhances memory for the sequence of real-world experiences

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 11 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02117-5

How does sleep transform the way we remember our experiences? This study finds that sleep enhances memory for the order of events from an art tour, but not the details of the events. The sleep-related advantage for sequences persists for over a year.

Why we organized ‘Stand Up For Science’

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 10 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02146-0

In the USA, the Trump administration has signed executive orders that impose censorship on key areas of scientific research, strip government scientists of their jobs and reduce federal funding for science. Five co-organizers of the nationwide Stand Up For Science movement explain the need for collective action at this time.

Brain waves in both actual and imagined navigation show structured oscillations

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 10 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02120-w

Our study investigated brain waves in freely moving humans who learned to navigate, remember and then imagine walking specific routes. Brain waves in the medial temporal lobe during real-world and imagined navigation are similarly structured, which underpins the parallels between physical and mental wayfinding.

Human neural dynamics of real-world and imagined navigation

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 10 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02119-3

Seeber et al. studied brain recordings from implanted electrodes in freely moving humans. Neural dynamics encoded actual and imagined routes similarly, demonstrating parallels between navigational, imaginative and mnemonic abilities in the human brain.

Crediting non-author contributors in scientific publishing

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 07 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02123-7

Scientific publications often benefit from diverse contributions that go uncredited owing to a lack of guidelines for recognizing non-author contributors. We propose ‘extended research credits’ — a standardized, tiered system (modelled after the attribution style of the film industry) to highlight hidden labour in research.

Introducing synchronous robustness reports

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 07 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02129-1

Most empirical research articles feature a single primary analysis that is conducted by the authors. However, different analysis teams usually adopt different analytical approaches and frequently reach varied conclusions. We propose synchronous robustness reports — brief reports that summarize the results of alternative analyses by independent experts — to strengthen the credibility of science.

The global landscape of academic guidelines for generative AI and LLMs

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 03 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02124-6

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) in academia brings benefits for access and collaboration as well as challenges that include misinformation and threats to academic integrity. We examine 80 academic guidelines and recommend balanced approaches for the responsible integration of generative AI and LLMs in education.

A meta-analysis of the association of death anxiety with psychological distress and psychopathology

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 03 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02115-7

This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to estimate the relationship between death anxiety and distress or symptoms of mental disorders. The findings suggest consistently positive associations between death anxiety and distress outcomes.

Inhibitory control of speech production in the human premotor frontal cortex

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 03 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02118-4

In natural conversations, people are able to stop speaking at any time. Using high-density electrocorticography, Zhao et al. found a distinct neural signal in the human premotor cortex that inhibits speech output to achieve abrupt stopping.

Academic mentees thrive in big groups, but survive in small groups

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 03 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02114-8

Using longitudinal genealogical data on mentor–mentee relations and their publications, the authors find that mentees trained in larger groups tend to exhibit superior academic performance compared with those from smaller groups, provided they remain in academia post graduation.

No evidence of positive causal effects of maternal and paternal age at first birth on children’s test scores at age 10 years

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 27 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02108-6

Grätz et al. use Mendelian randomization to identify the causal effects of parental age at first birth on children's test scores. They find no causal effects of both maternal and paternal age at first birth on children's test scores at age 10.

Universally memorable voices

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 26 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02113-9

Some voices are instantly recognizable, whereas others are easily forgotten — regardless of how well known the person behind them is. In an experimental study, Revsine and colleagues report consistency in the vocal identities that are remembered or forgotten by listeners, which suggests universal principles that determine what makes a voice memorable.

The memorability of voices is predictable and consistent across listeners

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 26 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02112-w

In a large-scale online study, Revsine et al. observed that participants tend to remember (or forget) the same speakers’ voices, regardless of what they were saying. They show that how memorable a voice is can be predicted from a set of acoustic features.

Skill dependencies underlie career paths and have societal implications

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 24 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41562-024-02094-1

A framework to understand the labour market reveals a nested hierarchical architecture in human capital in which specific knowledge and skills are contingent upon foundational, general skills and knowledge. This nested skill structure provides a new perspective on wage premiums and persistent wage disparity observed across different demographic groups.
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