Researchers have announced that they have successfully implemented a groundbreaking method to enhance how the human brain learns through external manipulation and neural feedback, a process they refer to as ‘sculpting’ brain activity patterns.
Imagine being able to engrave a new pattern of brain activity in an individual, facilitating quicker learning or improving treatments for mental health conditions and developmental issues like depression or autism. Now, envision achieving this without the need for surgical intervention or any physical alterations. Sounds like something out of a sci-fi story?
Though it may seem fantastical, this is exactly what Coraline Iordan, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences and neuroscience at the University of Rochester, has been striving to accomplish. She has demonstrated for the first time that it is indeed possible to learn new visual categories of objects this way.
Typically, learning occurs as our brains adapt through experiences, education, or training. However, Iordan and her colleagues from Yale and Princeton have successfully piloted a new technique for teaching the human brain by utilizing external manipulation and neural feedback, which they define as the “sculpting” of brain activity patterns. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our method not only allows us to nudge existing complex brain activity patterns towards familiar ones, but — for the first time — to directly inscribe a new pattern into the brain and analyze its effect on an individual’s behavior,” states Iordan, the lead author.
Brain Sculpting — A Novel Learning Technique?
The researchers utilized real-time neuroimaging and immediate neurofeedback to alter how the brain processes and represents information regarding visual objects. During the experiment, participants reclined inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and observed objects projected onto a mirror positioned above them, which functioned like a small screen. The objects, abstract shapes interpreted by some as a petal, plant bulb, or butterfly, pulsed gently on the mirror until participants were able to “move” these shapes through their thought processes to align with a predetermined brain activity pattern selected by the scientists. Participants were instructed to “create a mental state” that would diminish the shape’s oscillation, although they had not been taught how to achieve such a mental state.
“What’s remarkable about this research is that neural reactions and associated behaviors connected to the new categories manifested without participants being fully aware of those categories. This underscores a longstanding theory in psychology regarding implicit processing — the capacity to respond meaningfully to information without awareness — and indicates that this concept extends to the acquisition and formation of new neural representations,” shares coauthor Jonathan Cohen, a cognitive neuroscientist at Princeton University.
The immediate feedback provided to the participants meant that the image stopped vibrating on their mirror once they successfully adjusted how they represented the visual object to match more closely a brain activity pattern designated by the researchers, as opposed to how it would have naturally been processed in their brains. Essentially, the scientists created a method that enabled individuals to learn new visual categories not by being explicitly taught what they were, but by modifying the processing of their brains when examining individual objects within those categories.
“Instead of instructing you and observing changes in your brain, we created a new category within your brain that would have emerged if you had genuinely learned it yourself,” clarifies Iordan. “Then, we verified whether you perceived the newly introduced category. It turns out you did.”
To motivate participants, they were offered financial rewards for successfully stopping the image from wobbling, potentially yielding significant bonuses over six consecutive sessions.
Potential Future Uses
Researchers aim to deepen their understanding of brain function changes in individuals with various neuropsychiatric, developmental, or psychological disorders, including major depression, visual agnosias (an inability to recognize common items), and autism. According to Iordan, their method could eventually contribute to clinical treatments by reshaping the brain patterns of patients to align more closely with those found in neurotypical individuals, potentially resulting in novel treatment strategies either as standalone approaches or in conjunction with existing therapies.
“This study represents one of the most compelling demonstrations to date of brain training utilizing real-time fMRI. Dr. Iordan employed neurofeedback to assist individuals in creating a mental category that subsequently influenced their behavior,” remarks coauthor Nicholas Turk-Browne, a psychologist at Yale University. “This discovery could significantly advance the development of brain-computer interfaces and clinical interventions in the future.”
At its essence, this research highlights the scientists’ novel access to the brain.
“We’ve effectively turned learning on its head by teaching you something that allowed you to vicariously acquire knowledge, despite not being explicitly presented with that information,” Iordan concludes. “This indicates that we can access the fundamental elements of learning in the brain in unprecedented ways — potentially for more complex learning tasks, such as entire categories of objects, intricate visual elements, or even beyond in the future.”
This study received funding from the John Templeton Foundation, Intel Corporation, and the National Institutes of Health.