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In a recent publication in *Nature Reviews Neuroscience*, Professor Frank Van Overwalle, from the Brain, Body and Cognition research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), sheds light on the often-overlooked role of the cerebellum in both motor and social-cognitive processes. His research contributes to a growing shift in the field of neuroscience, which has traditionally focused on the cerebrum.

Chronic pain and insomnia often occur together and can seriously affect patient well-being. To improve the quality of life of people who experience chronic pain and associated sleep disorders, the Pain in Motion and Brain, Body and Cognition research groups of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel teamed up with the SPINE research group of the University of Ghent for a large-scale investigation.

The emotions we feel about the ecological crisis are not without consequences. Whether it's anxiety, sadness or anger, environmental degradation generally leaves no one indifferent. Until now, these emotions have often been perceived as negative, or even as potential sources of psychological suffering.

Inhibition, mental set shifting, and memory updating are related to math skills in preschool children. These meta-analytic findings from a research project led by the Luxembourg Centre for Educational Testing and the University of Oslo were published in the Psychological Bulletin. Would you follow the squirrel? Imagine you-re sitting in your first-grade math class while there is an orange squirrel jumping from branch to branch just outside the classroom window.

Thursday, April 29, 2021 — People in poverty often experience a mixture of losses. However, scientific literature studying loss and grief in relation to poverty appears to be virtually non-existent. With her doctoral research, Karen Puttemans of VUB's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences wants to fill this gap.

For the first time ever, neurophysiologists of KU Leuven, Harvard and the University of Kyoto have succeeded in reversibly disabling a connection between two areas in the brains of primates while they were performing cognitive tasks and their whole brain activity was being monitored. The disconnection had a negative impact on the motivation of the animals, but not on their learning behaviour.

A group of researchers found that our learning capabilities are limited during slow wave sleep. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), they showed that while our brain is still able to perceive sounds during sleep, it is unable to group these sounds according to their organisation in a sequence. Hypnopedia, or the ability to learn during sleep, was popularized in the '60s, with for example the dystopia Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, in which individuals are conditioned to their future tasks during sleep.

Firstly, they gauged the tendency of participants (440 Belgian French-speaking or Dutch-speaking non-Muslims ) to help - by contributing a hypothetical sum of money - a fictional person bearing either a Christian (and traditionally 'Belgian') or Muslim first name.