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Sleep replay meets brain–machine interface

Nature Neuroscience volume 17, pages 1019–1021 (2014)Cite this article

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Brain–machine interfaces provide not only potential therapies, but also new tools for studying neuronal processing. A study now uses them to investigate how learning affects sleep activity in motor cortex.

The biological role of sleep has long fascinated neuroscientists. There is still no consensus on this question; however, most of the proposed functions of sleep can be divided into two broad categories, both of which may turn out to be important. The first category consists of metabolic functions, such as the repair of low-level wear and tear on neurons and synapses, that may only be possible during the reduced electrical activity levels found during sleep (for example, ref. 1). The second category consists of plasticity functions, meaning the coordinated adjustment of synaptic weights in brain circuits. Examples of such plasticity processes could include a general decrease in synaptic strength to compensate for strengthening as a result of daytime experience2 and/or selective consolidation of synaptic changes corresponding to salient memories or task learning3. In this issue of Nature Neuroscience, Gulati et al.4 use a brain–machine interface task to investigate the relationship between sleep and learning in motor cortex.

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Figure 1: Cartoon illustration of population activity patterns that may underlie the results of Gulati et al.4.

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  1. Kenneth D. Harris is in the UCL Institute of Neurology and UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Pharmacology, University College London, London, UK.,

    Kenneth D Harris

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Correspondence to Kenneth D Harris.

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Harris, K. Sleep replay meets brain–machine interface. Nat Neurosci 17, 1019–1021 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3769

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