{"id":135528,"date":"2024-12-10T19:03:58","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=135528"},"modified":"2024-12-10T19:03:58","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:03:58","slug":"can-we-program-the-brain-to-learn-without-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=135528","title":{"rendered":"Can We Program the Brain to Learn Without Teaching?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Summary: <\/strong>Researchers have developed a groundbreaking technique to \u201cwrite\u201d new learning patterns directly into the brain using real-time neurofeedback from fMRI imaging. Participants in the study learned new visual object categories without explicit teaching, as their brain activity was subtly shaped to align with predesignated patterns.<\/p>\n<p>This approach demonstrates that it\u2019s possible to directly sculpt neural responses, potentially paving the way for innovative treatments for neuropsychiatric and developmental disorders. The findings offer unprecedented insights into the building blocks of learning and how the brain processes information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key Facts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Neural Sculpting:<\/strong> Researchers used real-time neurofeedback to directly alter brain activity, creating new visual learning patterns.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Implicit Learning:<\/strong> Participants learned new categories without conscious awareness, highlighting the power of implicit neural training.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Clinical Potential:<\/strong> This technique could lead to novel treatments for conditions like autism and depression by reshaping brain patterns.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong>University of Rochester<\/p>\n<p><strong>Imagine being able to inscribe a new pattern of activity into a person\u2019s brain that would allow for faster learning, or better treatment of psychiatric and developmental disorders such as depression or autism. Now imagine being able to do that in a way that doesn\u2019t require brain surgery or any physical manipulation. Sounds like science fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It still is. But that\u2019s exactly what\u00a0Coraline Iordan, an assistant professor of\u00a0brain and cognitive sciences\u00a0and of\u00a0neuroscience\u00a0at the\u00a0University of Rochester\u00a0has been working toward, showing for the first time that it can certainly be done for learning new visual categories of objects.<\/p>\n<p>Generally, learning happens when our brain changes through experience, study, or instruction. But Iordan and colleagues at Yale and Princeton successfully tested a novel approach for teaching the human brain to learn through external manipulation and neural feedback\u2014what they call the \u201csculpting\u201d of brain activity patterns.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Programming the Brain to Learn Without Teaching\" width=\"1170\" height=\"658\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Y9P2OPE6vmk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Video credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@Neuroscience\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Neuroscience News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0research\u00a0appears in the\u00a0<em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith our method not only can we nudge complex patterns around in the brain toward known ones, but also\u2014for the first time\u2014write directly a new pattern into the brain and measure what effect that has on a person\u2019s behavior,\u201d says lead author Iordan.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Brain sculpting\u2014a new approach to learning?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The scientists used real-time neuroimaging and second-by-second neurofeedback to modify how the brain represents and processes information about visual objects. Lying inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, study participants viewed objects projected onto a mirror above their heads, which looked like a small screen.<\/p>\n<p>The object<sub>\u00ad<\/sub>\u2014an abstract shape that some participants described as a petal, plant bulb, or butterfly\u2014pulsed gently on the participants\u2019 mirror until they managed to \u201cmove it\u201d by their own thought processes to the pattern of activity in their brain (monitored via fMRI in real time) that the scientists had previously chosen.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers instructed the participants to \u201cgenerate a mental state\u201d that would reduce the shape\u2019s oscillation but had not taught the study participants how to achieve such mental state.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><picture fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-106911\"><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence.jpg.webp 1200w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-300x200.jpg.webp 300w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-770x513.jpg.webp 770w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-1155x770.jpg.webp 1155w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-370x247.jpg.webp 370w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-293x195.jpg.webp 293w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-150x100.jpg.webp 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"\/><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence.jpg\" alt=\"This shows a brain.\" srcset=\"https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-770x513.jpg 770w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-1155x770.jpg 1155w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-370x247.jpg 370w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-293x195.jpg 293w, https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/files\/2024\/12\/neurofeedback-learning-neurosicence-150x100.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"\/> <\/picture><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Instead of teaching you something and measuring how your brain changes, we wrote a new category into your brain that would have appeared had you learned it yourself. Credit: Neuroscience News<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cOne of the striking features of the study is that the neural responses and corresponding behavior to the new categories occurred without explicit awareness of those categories, showing that a long tradition of work in psychology on implicit\u00a0<em>processing<\/em>\u2014that is, the ability to respond to information meaningfully outside of awareness\u2014also extends to the learning and formation of new neural representations,\u201d says coauthor\u00a0Jonathan Cohen, a cognitive neuroscientist at Princeton University.<\/p>\n<p>The immediate feedback given to the study participants here meant that the image stopped wobbling on their mirror once they successfully managed to represent the visual object more similarly to a brain activity pattern that the researchers had previously designated, instead of how the object would have been represented in their brains naturally.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the scientists had developed a method that caused people to learn new categories of visual objects, not by teaching them what the categories were, but by changing how their brains worked when they looked at the individual objects in those categories.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead of teaching you something and measuring how your brain changes, we wrote a new category into your brain that would have appeared had you learned it yourself,\u201d explains Iordan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen we tested whether you saw the new category that we had inserted. Turns out you did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To ensure study participants were highly motivated to succeed, they were rewarded monetarily if they managed to stop the image wobble, which over six daily sessions could amount to a sizeable bonus.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Future applications<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Scientists are working to better understand what exactly happens to brain function in people with a variety of neuropsychiatric, developmental, or psychological disorders, such as major depression, visual agnosias (the inability to recognize everyday items), and autism.<\/p>\n<p>According to Iordan, a method like theirs may eventually play a role in clinical treatment by modifying the brain patterns of patients to make theirs look more similar to the brain patterns found in the neurotypical population, which down the road could lead to new approaches for treatment, either by itself or in conjunction with already existing therapies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis study is one of the most powerful demonstrations yet of brain training with real-time fMRI. Dr. Iordan used neurofeedback to help humans create a category in their mind that then influenced their behavior,\u201d says coauthor\u00a0Nicholas Turk-Browne, a psychologist at Yale University.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the future, this discovery could inform the development of\u00a0brain-computer interfaces\u00a0and clinical interventions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At its core lies the scientists\u2019 ability to access the brain in a way that hasn\u2019t been done before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe essentially turned learning on its head and taught your brain something that caused you to vicariously gain information, even though you were never explicitly given that information,\u201d says Iordan.<\/p>\n<p> \u201cThat tells us we have access to the building blocks of learning in the brain in a way that we haven\u2019t had before\u2014for learning things that are much more complicated, such as entire categories of items, complex visual things, or potentially even beyond that someday.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Funding: <\/strong>The study was supported by funding from the\u00a0John Templeton Foundation,\u00a0Intel Corporation, and the\u00a0National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About this learning and neuroscience research news<\/h2>\n<p class=\"has-background\" style=\"background-color:#ffffe8\"><strong>Author: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/author\/sknispel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sandra Knispel<\/a><br \/><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">University of Rochester<\/a><br \/><strong>Contact: <\/strong>Sandra Knispel \u2013 University of Rochester<br \/><strong>Image: <\/strong>The image is credited to Neuroscience News<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-background\" style=\"background-color:#ffffe8\"><strong>Original Research: <\/strong>Open access.<br \/>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.2410445121\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sculpting new visual categories into the human brain<\/a>\u201d by Coraline Iordan et al. <em>PNAS<\/em><\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-pale-cyan-blue-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-pale-cyan-blue-background-color has-background\"\/>\n<p><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sculpting new visual categories into the human brain<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Learning requires changing the brain. This typically occurs through experience, study, or instruction. We report an alternate route for humans to acquire visual knowledge, through the direct sculpting of activity patterns in the human brain that mirror those expected to arise through learning.<\/p>\n<p>We used neurofeedback from closed-loop real-time functional MRI to create new categories of visual objects in the brain, without the participants\u2019 explicit awareness. After neural sculpting, participants exhibited behavioral and neural biases for the learned, but not for the control categories.<\/p>\n<p>The ability to sculpt new perceptual distinctions into the human brain offers a noninvasive research paradigm for causal testing of the link between neural representations and behavior.<\/p>\n<p>As such, beyond its current application to perception, our work potentially has broad relevance for advancing understanding in other domains of cognition such as decision-making, memory, and motor control.<\/p>\n<p> <!-- Form created by Optin Forms plugin by WPKube: create beautiful optin forms with ease! --> <!-- https:\/\/wpkube.com\/ --><!--optinforms-form5-container--> <!-- \/ Optin Forms --> <\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1660802\">\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\");\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/neurofeedback-learning-neuroscience-28219\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary: Researchers have developed a groundbreaking technique to \u201cwrite\u201d new learning patterns directly into the brain using real-time neurofeedback from fMRI imaging. Participants in the study learned new visual object &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=135528\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8628],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}