Web cookies (also called HTTP cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small pieces of data that websites store on your device (computer, phone, etc.) through your web browser. They are used to remember information about you and your interactions with the site.
Purpose of Cookies:
Session Management:
Keeping you logged in
Remembering items in a shopping cart
Saving language or theme preferences
Personalization:
Tailoring content or ads based on your previous activity
Tracking & Analytics:
Monitoring browsing behavior for analytics or marketing purposes
Types of Cookies:
Session Cookies:
Temporary; deleted when you close your browser
Used for things like keeping you logged in during a single session
Persistent Cookies:
Stored on your device until they expire or are manually deleted
Used for remembering login credentials, settings, etc.
First-Party Cookies:
Set by the website you're visiting directly
Third-Party Cookies:
Set by other domains (usually advertisers) embedded in the website
Commonly used for tracking across multiple sites
Authentication cookies are a special type of web cookie used to identify and verify a user after they log in to a website or web application.
What They Do:
Once you log in to a site, the server creates an authentication cookie and sends it to your browser. This cookie:
Proves to the website that you're logged in
Prevents you from having to log in again on every page you visit
Can persist across sessions if you select "Remember me"
What's Inside an Authentication Cookie?
Typically, it contains:
A unique session ID (not your actual password)
Optional metadata (e.g., expiration time, security flags)
Analytics cookies are cookies used to collect data about how visitors interact with a website. Their primary purpose is to help website owners understand and improve user experience by analyzing things like:
How users navigate the site
Which pages are most/least visited
How long users stay on each page
What device, browser, or location the user is from
What They Track:
Some examples of data analytics cookies may collect:
Page views and time spent on pages
Click paths (how users move from page to page)
Bounce rate (users who leave without interacting)
User demographics (location, language, device)
Referring websites (how users arrived at the site)
Here’s how you can disable cookies in common browsers:
1. Google Chrome
Open Chrome and click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy and security > Cookies and other site data.
Choose your preferred option:
Block all cookies (not recommended, can break most websites).
Block third-party cookies (can block ads and tracking cookies).
2. Mozilla Firefox
Open Firefox and click the three horizontal lines in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy & Security.
Under the Enhanced Tracking Protection section, choose Strict to block most cookies or Custom to manually choose which cookies to block.
3. Safari
Open Safari and click Safari in the top-left corner of the screen.
Go to Preferences > Privacy.
Check Block all cookies to stop all cookies, or select options to block third-party cookies.
4. Microsoft Edge
Open Edge and click the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy, search, and services > Cookies and site permissions.
Select your cookie settings from there, including blocking all cookies or blocking third-party cookies.
5. On Mobile (iOS/Android)
For Safari on iOS: Go to Settings > Safari > Privacy & Security > Block All Cookies.
For Chrome on Android: Open the app, tap the three dots, go to Settings > Privacy and security > Cookies.
Be Aware:
Disabling cookies can make your online experience more difficult. Some websites may not load properly, or you may be logged out frequently. Also, certain features may not work as expected.
Brain Switch: How Bilingual Brains Juggle Sound Systems
Imagine hearing a sound like “ka” while watching a movie. If you are bilingual in English and Spanish, that sound might mean something different in each language. Now imagine switching between English and Spanish movies, each with the same sound playing in the background. How does your brain decide what language that sound belongs to? That is the question at the heart of our project—how bilingual brains manage competing sound systems.
Here is how it works. In our study, English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals passively listened to speech sounds while watching short films in either English or Spanish. The same two sounds were played in both settings, but those sounds represent different speech categories in each language. For example, English separates the sounds “ga” and “ka” using a timing cue called Voice Onset Time (VOT), but in Spanish, the same cue does not carry the same weight. We used brain recordings to see how participants processed these sounds depending on the language they were immersed in.
And what we found was striking. Bilinguals’ brains were highly sensitive to the language context. When watching an English movie, their brains treated the “ga” and “ka” sounds as very different. But during the Spanish movie, the same brains showed reduced sensitivity—almost as if the sounds were not different anymore. This suggests that bilinguals can shift their sound processing depending on which language they think is active. We saw this flexibility in brain regions linked to executive control—the part of the brain that helps with things like decision-making and task switching. Monolinguals, on the other hand, did not show this same flexibility. Their brains processed the sounds the same way regardless of language context.
Why does this matter? Because it shows that bilinguals are not just juggling two languages at the word level—they are managing competition between sounds even before words are formed. Their brains use control systems to sort out which language is in play and adjust how they listen accordingly. This tells us that bilingualism taps into general brain systems for managing conflict and making choices, not just language-specific systems. Listen to the Notebook LM Podcast
Now we are taking the idea one step further.
In our new project, we introduced a third language—Mandarin—but not as part of the speech sounds themselves. The sounds stayed exactly the same: the same “ga” and “ka” syllables from before. What changed was the context. This time, participants watched a movie in Mandarin, a language none of them understood, while hearing the same speech sounds in the background.
This allowed us to ask a new question:Can simply being in an unfamiliar language context change how the brain processes sounds? And more specifically, do bilinguals show different brain responses than monolinguals when the context is completely unknown?
We think the answer may be yes. Because bilinguals are experienced at toggling between languages, their brains might be more sensitive to contextual cues—even when the language is unfamiliar. They may be better at detecting when a new “mode” is needed, activating more flexible processing strategies. If bilinguals adjust their brain responses to the same sounds simply because the language of the movie changed, that would suggest their experience helps them stay mentally agile, even with unfamiliar input.
That is the idea behind Brain Switch—a study exploring how experience with two languages may help the brain stay open and adaptable when encountering a third.