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futurity_sci_tech 00176.txt

#Neurons reveal the brain s learning limit Scientists have discovered a fundamental constraint in the brain that may explain why it s easier to learn a skill that s related to an ability you already have. For example a trained pianist can learn a new melody easier than learning how to hit a tennis serve. As reported in Nature the researchers found for the first time that there are limitations on how adaptable the brain is during learning and that these restrictions are a key determinant for whether a new skill will be easy or difficult to learn. Understanding how the brain s activity can be lexedduring learning could eventually be used to develop better treatments for stroke and other brain injuries. Lead author Patrick T. Sadtler a Ph d. candidate in the University of Pittsburgh department of bioengineering compared the study s findings to cooking. uppose you have flour sugar baking soda eggs salt and milk. You can combine them to make different items bread pancakes and cookies but it would be difficult to make hamburger patties with the existing ingredientssadtler says. e found that the brain works in a similar way during learning. We found that subjects were able to more readily recombine familiar activity patterns in new ways relative to creating entirely novel patterns . or the study the research team trained animals (Rhesus macaques) to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) similar to ones that have shown recent promise in clinical trials for assisting quadriplegics and amputees his evolving technology is a powerful tool for brain researchsays Daofen Chen program director at the National Institute of Neurological disorders and Stroke (NINDS) part of the National institutes of health. t helps scientists study the dynamics of brain circuits that may explain the neural basis of learning. he researchers recorded neural activity in the subject s motor cortex and directed the recordings into a computer which translated the activity into movement of a cursor on the computer screen. This technique allowed the team to specify the activity patterns that would move the cursor. The test subjects goal was to move the cursor to targets on the screen which required them to generate the patterns of neural activity that the experimenters had requested. If the subjects could move the cursor well that meant that they had learned to generate the neural activity pattern that the researchers had specified. The results showed that the subjects learned to generate some neural activity patterns more easily than others since they only sometimes achieved accurate cursor movements. The harder-to-learn patterns were different from any of the preexisting patterns whereas the easier-to-learn patterns were combinations of preexisting brain patterns. Because the existing brain patterns likely reflect how the neurons are interconnected the results suggest that the connectivity among neurons shapes learning. e wanted to study how the brain changes its activity when you learn and also how its activity cannot change. Cognitive flexibility has a limit and we wanted to find out what that limit looks like in terms of neuronssays Aaron P. Batista assistant professor of bioengineering at University of Pittsburgh. Byron M. Yu assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at Carnegie mellon believes this work demonstrates the utility of BCI for basic scientific studies that will eventually impact people s lives. hese findings could be the basis for novel rehabilitation procedures for the many neural disorders that are characterized by improper neural activityyu says. estoring function might require a person to generate a new pattern of neural activity. We could use techniques similar to what were used in this study to coach patients to generate proper neural activity. he researchers are part of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) a joint program between Carnegie mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Additional researchers from University of Pittsburgh Carnegie mellon and Stanford university and Palo alto Medical Foundation contributed to the work. The NIH National Science Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund funded the research W

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