Researchers reveal how brain flexibly processes complex information ANI | Updated: Apr 29, 2021 22:43 IST
Berlin [Germany], April 29 (ANI): Human decision-making depends on the flexible processing of complex information, but how the brain may adapt processing to momentary task demands has remained unclear.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have now outlined several crucial neural processes revealing that our brain networks may rapidly and flexibly shift from a rhythmic to a noisy state when the need to process information increases.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Driving a car, deliberating over different financial options, or even pondering different life paths requires us to process an overwhelming amount of information.
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The brain s neural activity is irregular, changing from one moment to the next. To date, this apparent noise has been thought to be due to random natural variations or measurement error. However, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have shown that this neural variability may provide a unique window into brain function. In a new Perspective article out now in the journal
Neuron, the authors argue that researchers need to focus more on neural variability to fully understand how behavior emerges from the brain.
When neuroscientists investigate the brain, its activity seems to vary all the time. Sometimes activity is higher or lower, rhythmic or irregular. Whereas averaging brain activity has served as a standard way of visualizing how the brain works, the irregular, seemingly random patterns in neural signals have often been disregarded. Strikingly, such irregularities in neural activity appear regardless of whether single neurons or entire br