Brain complexity: using information (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, July 17, 2015, 16:10 (3198 days ago) @ David Turell

Single neuron studies are showing how the brain uses information. With 100 billion neurons there is a pattern in the noise:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150716124405.htm-"'If the brain could always count on receiving the same sensory response to the same stimulus, it would have an easier time," said neuroscientist Xaq Pitkow, lead author of a new study this week in Neuron. "But noise is always there in the brain: studies have repeatedly shown that neurons give a variety of responses to the same stimulus."-"'When neuroscientists first analyzed the output of individual neurons, they were surprised to find that the activity of just a single neuron sometimes predicted behavior in certain tasks," Pitkow said.-"The team tested each model against the activity of single neurons in monkeys that were undergoing perceptual tests to measure how accurately they could perceive slight movements to the left or right. The experimenters found that some neurons predicted the animals' guesses about whether they were moving left or right.-"'When we examined the output, we found that the monkeys' brains were not throwing away information," Pitkow said. "They were using each neuron's information very effectively. And we also saw that even though there were many neurons involved, the guess of any individual neuron was only slightly worse than the animal's actual guess during the test. These two pieces of evidence together indicate the neurons mostly share the same information."-"'One intriguing possibility that we are looking into is that redundancy allows the brain to reformat information and approach complex problems from many different angles," he said."