A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has discovered how the human brain is able to rapidly absorb and analyze new information , what we call learning. The study has been published in the journal Neuron .
For the experiment, the researchers performed several learning tests on monkeys while they were monitored by electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain waves. In learning tasks, scientists had already shown that neurons in the striatum area of the brain, the one that controls habit formation, were activated first and then followed by slower activation of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s executive control system.
The key was to find out if this staggered activation was caused by a communication between both brain regions or it was two independent systems . Thanks to the brain wave measurement, the researchers discovered that while the monkeys were learning the task, new brain wave patterns appeared, the so-called beta waves, which to the surprise of the experts, began to synchronize, showing that both regions, the striatum and the prefrontal cortex are communicating .
“There is some unknown mechanism that allows these resonance patterns to form, and these circuits start to ‘ring’ together. That buzzing then can promote later long-term plasticity changes in the brain, but the first thing that happens is that they start to synchronize, ”says Earl Miller, leader of the study.
According to the conclusions of the study, our ‘circuits’ are constantly updated to maintain the expansion of our knowledge, and “now we are seeing direct evidence of the interactions between these two systems during learning, which had not been seen before, ” he says. Miller.
