Our brain remains active during familiar and repetitive tasks-health

new the study It suggests that our brain is never resting, even when we are learning nothing about the world around us. The study was previously conducted in mice.

Our brain is likened to a computer, and the skills and memory learned are stored in the activity patterns of billions of nerve cells. But new research shows that memory of a particular event or experience may never settle. Instead, the activity patterns that store information can change continuously, even if you’re not learning something new.

Why doesn’t this make the brain forget what it learned? Studies at the University of Cambridge, Harvard Medical School, and Stanford University have shown how the brain can reliably access stored information in the face of significant changes in brain signals.

This study, led by Dr. Timothy O’Leary of the Cambridge Department of Engineering, shows that as different parts of the brain move around, it may need to relearn and track information in other parts of the brain. Published in the open-access journal eLife, this study provides some of the first evidence that certain changes in neural activity are compatible with long-term memory of learned skills.

Through modeling and analysis of data obtained from experiments that trained mice to rotate the visual cues at the beginning of a 4.5-meter-long virtual reality maze to the left or right at a T-junction, researchers This conclusion was reached. Before moving on to rewards. Results from 2017 show that single neurons in the brain are constantly altering the information encoded about this learned task. However, mouse behavior remains stable over the long term.

The data consisted of hundreds of nerve cell activity patterns recorded simultaneously in the part of the brain that controlled and planned movement, at a resolution that was not yet possible in humans.

“It’s as difficult to find a consistent pattern in this large collection of cells as it is to look at a myriad of individual samples to identify the behavior of an insect swarm,” O’Leary said. I am. “But in some respects, the brain itself needs to solve similar tasks, as other brain regions need to extract and process information from this same population.”

Neurons connect to hundreds or thousands of adjacent cells and extract information by weighting and pooling. This is directly similar to the method used by poll officials in the preparatory stage of elections. Survey results from multiple sources are collected and “weighted” according to their consistency. In this way, stable patterns can appear even when the individual measurements differ greatly.

The Cambridge group used this principle to build a decoding algorithm that extracts consistent hidden patterns within the complex activity of hundreds of cells. They found two things. First, there was a consistent hidden pattern that could accurately predict animal behavior. Second, the consistent pattern itself changes gradually over time, but not so rapidly that the decoding algorithm can’t keep up. This suggests that the brain is continually changing the internal code that relays information between different internal circuits.

Science Fiction explores the possibility of transferring our memory and experience directly from the brain to hardware devices. If future technology eventually allows us to upload and download our thoughts and memories, and when they are played many years later, the brain may not be able to interpret our patterns of activity. The apple concept-its color, taste, taste, and associated memory-may be consistent, but the pattern of activity it causes in the brain can change completely over time.

Such challenges will likely remain speculative in the near future, but as this study shows, techniques to achieve such a limited edition of mind reading are already a reality. The Brain Machine Interface is a rapidly mature technology, and human neural interfaces that can control prostheses and external hardware have been in clinical use for over a decade. The Cambridge Group’s research highlights a big open challenge in extracting reliable information from the brain.

“Even if we can monitor brain activity and relate it directly to memory and experience, the pattern of activity itself is constantly changing over the course of several days,” says O, a lecturer in information engineering and medical neuroscience. “Leary says. “Our study could build and maintain a relatively stable “dictionary” despite this change to read what animals think about when navigating a familiar environment. It shows that you can do it.

“This study suggests that our brain never rests, even when we don’t learn anything about the outside world. This has a profound impact on our understanding of the brain, the brain-machine interface, and neural prostheses. Will be given.”

(This article has been published from the telegraph agency feed with no changes to the text. Only the headings have changed.)

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