Mastering a new skill — whether a sport, an instrument, or a craft — causes new neural activity patterns to emerge in the brain, a study has found.
While it is understood that a healthy brain is capable of learning these new skills, how the brain changes in order to develop new behaviours is a relative mystery.
More precise knowledge of this underlying neural circuitry may eventually improve the quality of life for individuals who have suffered brain injury by enabling them to more easily relearn everyday tasks.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US reveals what happens in the brain as learners progress from novice to expert.
The research, published in the journal PNAS, showed that new neural activity patterns emerge with long-term learning and established a causal link between these patterns and new behavioral abilities.
“We used a brain-computer interface (BCI), which creates a direct connection between our subject’s neural activity and the movement of a computer cursor,” said Emily Oby, postdoctoral associate from the University of Pittsburgh.
“We recorded the activity of around 90 neural units in the arm region of the primary motor cortex of Rhesus monkeys as they performed a task that required them to move the cursor to align with targets on the monitor,” Oby said.
To determine whether the monkeys would form new neural patterns as they learned, the research group encouraged the animals to attempt a new BCI skill and then compared those recordings to the pre-existing neural patterns.
“We first presented the monkey with what we call an ‘intuitive mapping’ from their neural activity to the cursor that worked with how their neurons naturally fire and which didn’t require any learning,” said Oby. (PTI)
