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HOW YOUR BRAIN DETECTS PATTERNS WITHOUT CONSCIOUS THOUGHT  
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Miryam Naddaf
September 25, 2024
Nature [[link removed]]

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_ Neurons in certain brain areas integrate ‘what’ and ‘when’
information to discern hidden order in events in real time. _

Neurons, confocal fluorescence microscopy, by ZEISS Microscopy (CC
BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 

The human brain is constantly picking up patterns in everyday
experiences — and can do so without conscious thought
[[link removed]], finds a study1
[[link removed]] of
neuronal activity in people who had electrodes implanted in their
brain tissue for medical reasons.

The study shows that neurons in key brain regions combine information
on what occurs and when, allowing the brain to pick out the patterns
in events as they unfold over time. That helps the brain to predict
coming events, the authors say. The work was published today
in _Nature_.

“The brain does a lot of things that we are not consciously aware
of,” says Edvard Moser, a neuroscientist at the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology in Trondheim. “This is no exception.”

Blizzard of data

To make sense of the world around us, the brain must process an
onslaught of information on what happens, where it happens and when it
happens. The study’s authors wanted to explore how the brain
organizes this information over time — a crucial step in learning
and memory [[link removed]].

The team studied 17 people who had epilepsy and had electrodes
implanted in their brains
[[link removed]] in preparation
for surgical treatment. These electrodes allowed the authors to
directly capture the activity of individual neurons in multiple brain
regions.

Among those regions were the hippocampus
[[link removed]] and entorhinal
cortex [[link removed]], which are
involved in memory and navigation
[[link removed]]. These areas
contain time and place cells that act as the body’s internal clock
and GPS system, encoding time and locations. “All the external world
coming into our brain has to be filtered through that system,” says
study co-author Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist at the
University of California, Los Angeles.

Parade of faces

In preparation for the main experiment, the researchers showed each
participant a variety of images of faces. For each participant, the
scientists identified six of the faces that prompted an individual
neuron in the participant’s brain to fire
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participant might have a ‘man in sunglasses’ neuron, for example,
along with a ‘woman in a hat’ neuron and four more that each
favoured a particular face.

The team arranged each participant’s six images in a triangle that
had one image at each corner and one on each side. Each image was
connected to its nearest neighbours by lines running down the
triangle’s sides and through its interior.

In an experimental trial, participants viewed a series of the face
images. A simple rule dictated the sequence of images: each face was
followed by one that was connected to it on the triangle (see
‘Pattern recognition’). For example, if the first face was the one
on the triangle’s bottom left corner, the second face would be one
of its two direct neighbours: the face in the middle of the
triangle’s base or the face in the middle of the triangle’s left
side. The experimenters did not reveal this rule to participants.
What’s more, they distracted the participants by asking them
questions about the images’ content during each trial.

[PATTERN RECOGNITION. Graphic shows researchers study model.]

Source: Ref. 1

During the experiment, neurons in each participant’s hippocampus and
entorhinal cortex gradually began to respond not only to the face
being presented but also to faces directly connected to it on the
triangle. When asked whether they noticed any pattern in the order of
the images, the participants said they didn’t. But their brain cells
still learnt the pattern, showing that the brain can recognize
patterns without conscious awareness. In the breaks between trials,
the participants’ ‘face’ neurons replayed what they had learnt,
cycling through the patterns on their own without being stimulated to
do so.

“This is something that is not explicit, it is implicit. And the
brain gets it, essentially, very quickly, and we can see those changes
in the individual cells,” says Fried.

Future-facing neurons

The authors found that the neurons could also anticipate what images
would appear next, suggesting that the brain can learn to predict
future events on the basis of learnt patterns.

“The fact that’s happening without any external motivator is
really interesting,” says Matt Jones, a neuroscientist at the
University of Bristol, UK. “Many of the findings are remarkably
consistent with predictions from rodent work, highlighting how
hippocampal circuits have evolved to structure our cognitive maps,”
he adds.

Understanding how the brain organizes information about sequences of
events could have important clinical applications. For
example, memory-enhancement therapies
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boosting specific neuronal patterns that represent important memories,
says Fried. “It’s eventually a question of putting things together
in time. This is really the crux of memory.”

_doi: [link removed]

References

*
Tacikowski, P., Kalender, G., Ciliberti, D. & Fried,
I. _Nature_ [link removed]
(2024). Article
[[link removed]] Google Scholar
[[link removed].]

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_Miryam Naddaf is a science writer based in London. Author
publications. [[link removed]]_

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Nature [[link removed]] is a
weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed
research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its
originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness,
accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature also
provides rapid, authoritative, insightful and arresting news and
interpretation of topical and coming trends affecting science,
scientists and the wider public. Nature's mission statement: First,
to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances
in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and
discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure
that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public
throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for
knowledge, culture and daily life.

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