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Shedding light on learning

Nature Neuroscience volume 17, pages 746–747 (2014)Cite this article

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Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and optical imaging have both undergone impressive technological growth in recent years. A study in which mice learn to modulate neural activity merges these technologies to investigate the neural basis of BCI learning with unprecedented spatial detail.

Imagine the brain as a football stadium, with the fans as neurons. Learning a new behavioral task requires the neurons to produce new, coordinated activity patterns. This is analogous to the fans learning to hold up flashcards in a coordinated way to spell out a team's name. As with a fan trying to determine whether to hold up his or her flashcard on the basis of a low-resolution, aerial shot of the stadium shown on its jumbo screen, an individual neuron typically does not receive direct feedback about how its activity influences task success. How do the neurons (or fans) learn to coordinate their activity to produce the correct behavior? A study by Clancy et al.1 in this issue unites two fast-growing technologies to examine the neural basis of learning: optical imaging, which can be used to record simultaneously from populations of individual neurons at high spatial resolution, and BCIs, which provide a closed-loop system for conditioning neurons to show particular activity patterns. This is the first time a BCI has been driven by optical signals and it provides new insight into how neurons change their activity during learning on a fine spatial scale.

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Figure 1: Studying learning using an optical BCI.

Marina Corral Spence/Nature Publishing Group

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Byron M. Yu is in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.,

    Byron M Yu

  2. Byron M. Yu and Steven M. Chase are in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.,

    Byron M Yu & Steven M Chase

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  1. Byron M Yu
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Correspondence to Byron M Yu or Steven M Chase.

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Yu, B., Chase, S. Shedding light on learning. Nat Neurosci 17, 746–747 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3723

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