A previously unknown process that helps two brain regions cooperate when joint action is required has been unravelled by researchers led by an Indian-origin scientist.
A team led by Stanford University electrical engineering professor Krishna Shenoy may have solved a riddle about the inner workings of the brain, which consists of billions of neurons, organised into many different regions, with each region primarily responsible for different tasks.
"This is among the first mechanisms reported in the literature for letting brain areas process information continuously but only communicate what they need to," said Matthew T Kaufman, who was a postdoctoral scholar in the Shenoy lab when he co-authored the paper.
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Researchers used a new approach to examine their data that yielded some findings that were broader than arm movements.
As they applied these new techniques to study arm movements, the researchers discovered a way that different regions of the brain keep results localised or broadcast signals to recruit other regions as needed.
"Our neurons are always firing, and they're always connected. So it's important to control what signals are communicated from one area to the next," said Kaufman.
The scientists derived their findings by studying monkeys that had been trained to make precise arm movements. The monkeys were taught to pause briefly before making the reach, thus letting their brain prepare for a moment before moving.
The muscle readings enabled the scientists to ascertain what sorts of signals the arm receives during the preparatory state compared with the action step.
The brain readings were more complex. Two regions control arm movements. They are located near the top centre of the brain, an inch to the side, researchers said.
Each of the two regions is made up of more than 20 million neurons. The scientists wanted to understand the behaviour of both regions, but they couldn't probe millions of neurons, they said.
So they took readings from carefully chosen samples of about 100 to 200 individual neurons in each of the two regions.
The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
