Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA. A new study found that 19- and 21-month-old infants have a general expectation of fairness and they can apply it appropriately to different situations.

The authors think this innate moral sense might explain the power of early trauma. Small children expect people to help others in distress and not harm others. Violation of those expectations could explain the negative and enduring consequences of such events.

La Jolla, CA, USA. There is an unexpected feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes.

The findings may clarify embryonic development of the nervous system, a time axons when move with specificity to their targets. Learning how motor neurons control muscle movements can lead to new therapies for neurological disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and provide insight into certain

Providence, RI, USA. The explorers among us who test the unknown do so because they aren't sure they will like it, employing a strategy of maximizing rewards by discovering whether as yet unexplored options might yield better returns.

Researchers show in a new study that such explorers use a specific part of their brain to calculate the relative uncertainty of their choices, while non-explorers do not.

Cambridge, MA, USA. A new study reveals that on the left side of the brain, the fusiform gyrus — an area long associated with face recognition — carefully calculates the facelike properties of an image.

The right fusiform gyrus then appears to use that information to make a quick, categorical decision of whether the object is, indeed, a face.

Cambridge, United Kingdom. What is it about the human brain that makes language possible?

Two evolutionary systems working together, say neuroscientists William Marslen-Wilson and Lorraine Tyler.