Volume 9 Issue 4, April 2025

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives do not always translate across different contexts. Hye Yun Kang highlights the complexities of implementing DEI policies across cultures.

The emergence of China as a global leader in scientific output is being overshadowed by a growing crisis of confidence in its research integrity. In addition to existing efforts, we propose five actionable initiatives to bolster the fight against China’s retraction crisis.

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 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.

Given its ability to manage a multitude of functions in support of survival, the dynamics and organization of the brain offer the city — another confluence of structures and processes — lessons for urban design. I propose the concept of ‘neuromimicry’ as a way of exploring the potential application of these lessons.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Xu et al. review applications of urban mobility behaviour data and propose a temporal bipartite network that reveals mobility patterns between people and places. It helps to track urban inequalities in social mixing, facility access and adaptation.

In this Perspective the authors propose the use of implementation science methods concurrently with safety and effectiveness testing to accelerate the translation of psychedelic research into psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Hosseinioun et al. use surveys and resumes from the USA to examine patterns of skill interdependence and identify a nested hierarchy in human capital. This structure provides insights into wage disparities and long-term wage penalties across groups.

Pfänder and Altay conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of 67 experimental articles, showing that people discern true from false news with ease. When making mistakes, people err on the side of skepticism and rate true news as false, instead of being fooled by false news.

Bagaïni et al. use an individual participant data meta-analytic approach to summarize the temporal stability of 358 risk preference measures, finding evidence of low agreement across measures.

What is the state of trust in scientists around the world? To answer this question, the authors surveyed 71,922 respondents in 68 countries and found that trust in scientists is moderately high.

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.

This real-life register-based cohort study examined healthcare use in Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2-vaccinated 12–18-years-olds and age-matched controls. Estimates were close to one and do not indicate that BNT162b2 leads to a practically meaningful increase in healthcare use among vaccinated adolescents.

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.

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.

Brissenden et al. demonstrate that spatial cognition adaptively shifts to counteract errors in the allocation of visual attention, indicating error-driven learning mechanisms previously ascribed solely to motor control contribute to visual cognition.

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.

This genome-wide association study identifies 162 genetic loci linked to income, shedding light on the complex interplay between genetics, income, education and health.

In this cross-ancestry genome-wide meta-analysis on depression, Luo et al. identify new risk loci and potential causal variants and genes, providing insights into the genetic architecture of depression and likely therapeutic targets.