{"280951":{"#nid":"280951","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Brain Circuits Multitask to Detect, Discriminate the Outside World","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EImagine driving on a dark road. In the distance you see a single light. As the light approaches it splits into two headlights. That\u2019s a car, not a motorcycle, your brain tells you. \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA new study found that neural circuits in the brain rapidly multitask between detecting and discriminating sensory input, such as headlights in the distance. That\u2019s different from how electronic circuits work, where one circuit performs a very specific task. The brain, the study found, is wired in way that allows a single pathway to perform multiple tasks.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe showed that circuits in the brain change or adapt from situations when you need to detect something versus when you need to discriminate fine details,\u201d said \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/stanley.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EGarrett Stanley\u003C\/a\u003E, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, whose lab performed the research. \u201cOne of the things the brain is good at is doing multiple things. Engineers have trouble with that.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research findings were published online in the journal \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1016\/j.neuron.2014.01.025\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003ENEURON\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E on March 5. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cEvery day we are bombarded with sensations and the brain automatically chooses which ones to detect. This study may help scientists answer fundamental questions about how neurological disorders may disrupt the brain circuits that make those choices,\u201d said Jim Gnadt, Ph.D., program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of NIH. \u201cInsights into sensory perception may help design new therapies, including prosthetic devices for amputees that recreate human touch.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe distance at which a person can discern two headlights from a single light is controlled by the acuity of the body\u2019s sensory pathway. For decades neuroscientists have assumed that the level of one\u2019s acuity is controlled by the distance between areas in the brain that are triggered by the sensory input. If these two areas of the brain closely overlap, then two sensory inputs \u2014 two headlights in the distance \u2014 will appear as one, the thinking went. The new study, for the first time, used animal models and optical imaging to directly assess how acuity is controlled in the brain, and how acuity can adapt to the task at hand. One neuronal circuit can do different things and do them in a robust way, the study found.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe general problem that is not well understood is how information about the outside world makes its way into our brain, into these patterns of electrical activity that ultimately let us perceive the outside world,\u201d Stanley said. \u201cThis paper squarely goes after that link between what the brain is doing, how it\u2019s activated and what that means for perception.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESensory information is encoded in the brain, much like gene sequences in DNA code for some physical representation. The brain has corresponding codes for when the visual pathway detects an object, like a coffee cup. There\u2019s a representation in the brain to transform that input into sensation. \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearchers had yet to adequately quantify the link between discerning whether an object exists and discriminating finer details about what that object is, Stanley said. \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSurprisingly, we don\u2019t understand neural coding problems very well, either in normal physiology or in disease states,\u201d Stanley said. \u201cI think it\u2019s great to be an engineer that works on this because engineers tend to love and think about very complicated systems.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo learn about the details of the brain\u2019s acuity, the researchers studied an animal with a high level of acuity \u2014 the rat. Rats are nocturnal animals that use their whiskers to sense the outside world. Their whiskers are arranged in rows, and chunks of brain tissue correspond to those individual whiskers. That\u2019s similar to how a human\u2019s body surface is mapped onto the brain surface. When a rat\u2019s whisker touches something, a specific part of the brain becomes activated. When a person\u2019s finger touches something, a specific part of the brain becomes activated.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen we image the brain, we can move a whisker on the side of the face and on the opposite side of the brain there\u2019s a little hotspot that you can image in real time,\u201d Stanley said. \u003Cbr \/\u003EThe researchers deflected rats\u2019 whiskers and then used optical imaging technology to observe the areas of the brain that were activated and measured the overlap between those areas. Rats were also trained to perform a specific task depending on which whisker was deflected.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers found that pathways in the brain have the ability to switch between doing different kinds of tasks, such as detecting a sensory input and deciding what to do with that information. \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSame circuit, same cells, but doing something different in two different contexts,\u201d Stanley said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen engineers want a circuit to do something, they build a circuit specific for that task. When they want a circuit to do something else, they build a different circuit. But in the brain, a pathway adaptively changes between being good at detecting something to being good at discriminating something, the study showed. \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cAs an engineer, I can\u2019t design a circuit that would do that,\u201d Stanley said. \u201cThis is where the brain jumps out and says, \u2018I\u2019m better than you are at this.\u2019\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELearning more about how circuits in the brain multitask could lead to a better understanding of disease, therapeutic applications or to potentially improving how the brain functions. Stanley said that down the road engineers might be able to experimentally manipulate brain circuits to perform a desired task. \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cCan we make individuals better at doing something? Can we have them detect things more rapidly or discriminate between things with better acuity?\u201d Stanley said. \u201cUsing modern techniques, we believe that we can actually influence the circuit and have it selectively grab one kind of information from the outside world versus another.\u201d \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThis research is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number R01NS48285, and by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program under award number IOS-1131948. Any conclusions or opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsoring agencies.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECITATION\u003C\/strong\u003E: Douglas Ollerenshaw, et al., \u201cThe adaptive trade-off between detection and discrimination in cortical representations and behavior,\u201d (NEURON, March 2014). (\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1016\/j.neuron.2014.01.025\u0022\u003Ehttp:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1016\/j.neuron.2014.01.025\u003C\/a\u003E). \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EResearch News\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E177 North Avenue\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAtlanta, Georgia 30332-0181 USA\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/twitter.com\/GTResearchNews\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E@GTResearchNews\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMedia Relations Contacts:\u003C\/strong\u003E Brett Israel (\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/twitter.com\/btiatl\u0022\u003E@btiatl\u003C\/a\u003E) (404-385-1933) (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ebrett.israel@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E) or John Toon (404-894-6986) (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWriter:\u003C\/strong\u003E Brett Israel\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA new study found that neural circuits in the brain rapidly multitask between detecting and discriminating sensory input, such as headlights in the distance. That\u2019s different from how electronic circuits work, where one circuit performs a very specific task. The brain, the study found, is wired in way that allows a single pathway to perform multiple tasks.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"A new study found that neural circuits in the brain rapidly multitask between detecting and discriminating sensory input, such as headlights in the distance."}],"uid":"27902","created_gmt":"2014-03-05 13:28:39","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:15:58","author":"Brett Israel","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-03-05T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2014-03-05T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"280931":{"id":"280931","type":"image","title":"Garrett Stanley","body":null,"created":"1449244184","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:49:44","changed":"1475894973","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:49:33","alt":"Garrett Stanley","file":{"fid":"198920","name":"garrett_stanley.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/garrett_stanley_1.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/garrett_stanley_1.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":186377,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/garrett_stanley_1.jpg?itok=za48QE0L"}},"280941":{"id":"280941","type":"image","title":"Rat whiskers","body":null,"created":"1449244184","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:49:44","changed":"1475894973","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:49:33","alt":"Rat whiskers","file":{"fid":"198921","name":"rat-whiskers.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/rat-whiskers_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/rat-whiskers_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":341286,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/rat-whiskers_0.jpg?itok=h0TRKY5U"}}},"media_ids":["280931","280941"],"groups":[{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"},{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"}],"keywords":[{"id":"63261","name":"Brain Mapping"},{"id":"14462","name":"Garrett Stanley"},{"id":"88371","name":"neural circuits"},{"id":"7276","name":"neuron"},{"id":"1304","name":"neuroscience"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71891","name":"Health and Medicine"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBrett Israel\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E404-385-1933\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ebrett.israel@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/twitter.com\/btiatl\u0022\u003E@btiatl\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}