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Cognitive neuroscience

Learning how the brain learns

Nature volume 405, pages 523–525 (2000)Cite this article

Methods for monitoring brain activity in behaving animals and humans are being developed with increasing pace. But we are still far from understanding the processes in the brain that give rise to even simple types of behaviour. On page 567 of this issue1, Laubach and colleagues address the problem by recording the acti-vity of many nerve cells as rats learn a simple task, and combine this approach with sophisticated analytical algorithms.

It is widely accepted that large areas of cortex are involved in any behavioural process, and that these areas contain many modules, each consisting of groups of cells that process specific information. It is often assumed that, once the brain matures, each module and each cell fulfils one specific function. But accumulating evidence indicates that this may not be so. Instead it is likely that each cell participates in several different processes. The brain is also constantly changing, and each cell's effects may be rapidly modified2. So it is essential to study a large number of neurons simultaneously to understand how cells communicate and how neuronal interactions are modified in relation to learning and behaviour.

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Figure 1: Brain and behaviour.

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  1. Department of Physiology Hadassah Medical School and the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Eilon Vaadia

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  1. Eilon Vaadia
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Correspondence to Eilon Vaadia.

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Vaadia, E. Learning how the brain learns. Nature 405, 523–525 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35014716

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