From 21 to 25 July 2026, Florence hosted the 31st International Congress of Applied Psychology (ICAP 2026), the flagship event of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP). Held once every four years, the congress brings together researchers and practitioners from around the world.

Having a sweet tooth may be linked not only to eating habits but also to the way people make decisions. Researchers at HSE University have found that people with a preference for sweet foods tend to behave more impulsively—not because they want immediate rewards, but because they are less willing to tolerate uncertainty. These findings may help improve treatments for addiction. The study findings have been published in Frontiers in Psychology.

Why do some people voluntarily follow new rules while others ignore them? Researchers at HSE University have found that the answer lies not so much in people's willingness to cooperate, as previously believed, but in their ability to empathise with others. Empathy proved to be the strongest predictor of whether people chose to wear face masks voluntarily during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings have been published in Frontiers.

On June 22, Alexander Vyazmin successfully defended his PhD dissertation on grasping and transporting objects with the hand. The study examines how the requirement to rotate an object affects different phases of the movement even before contact with the object is made.

In an experiment involving 15 healthy men, scientists at HSE University investigated how different phases of the cardiac cycle influence the excitability of the motor cortex when participants viewed either their own photograph or the faces of strangers. The researchers found that when participants looked at their own image, the brain’s response to signals from the heart was weaker, meaning that the influence of cardiac activity on the motor cortex decreased. This finding came contrary to expectations, as self-focused attention was thought to enhance the brain's sensitivity to internal bodily signals. The study has been published in Frontiers in Signal Processing.

Researchers from the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience took part in the annual Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) conference, which was held on June 14–18, 2026 in Bordeaux, France. The team presented a series of studies on the perception of misleading narratives, manipulative messages, and the evaluation of information source credibility.

Yulia Gorodnicheva, a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences of HSE University, took part in “Tech-Friendly Weekend” — a youth festival held as part of the Digital Industry of Industrial Russia (CIPR) conference. The festival aims to popularize technology among young people.