Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University
This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins
University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools,
the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to
the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins
communications offices.
Fall is still days away but at coffee shops and grocery stores, it’s already peak autumn thanks to the arrival of a certain flavor that has come to signal the season’s unofficial start. Everyone knows, it’s pumpkin spice time.
But why?
Johns Hopkins University perception researchers can say a key to understanding why people love pumpkin spice is the smell of it. Those notes of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger trigger deeply rooted cozy memories of autumn.
September 20, 2021 Tags: brain science, Jason Fischer, Johns Hopkins University, olfactory, perception, pumpkin spice, scent
| Category: Business and Economics, Psychology
Anyone who’s ever tried to find something in a hurry knows how helpful it is to think about the lost item’s color, size and shape. But surprisingly, traits of an object that you can’t see also come into play during a search, Johns Hopkins University researchers found.
May 12, 2020 Tags: attention, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Jason Fischer, Johns Hopkins University, perception, vision science, visual search
| Category: Psychology
Whether or not they aced it in high school, human beings are physics masters when it comes to understanding and predicting how objects in the world will behave. A Johns Hopkins University cognitive scientist has found the source of that intuition, the brain’s “physics engine.”
August 8, 2016 Tags: brain science, Jason Fischer, Johns Hopkins University, physics, physics engine, PNAS
| Category: Natural Sciences, Psychology