How does our brain sort information
January 03, 2019 Source: China Economic Net
Window._bd_share_config={ "common":{ "bdSnsKey":{ },"bdText":"","bdMini":"2","bdMiniList":false,"bdPic":"","bdStyle":" 0","bdSize":"16"},"share":{ }};with(document)0[(getElementsByTagName('head')[0]||body).appendChild(createElement('script')) .src='http://bdimg.share.baidu.com/static/api/js/share.js?v=89860593.js?cdnversion='+~(-new Date()/36e5)];If there is a fragrant cheese in front of the eyes, the little mouse will usually rush to the delicious. But what if there is a fierce cat next to the cheese? What choices does the little mouse make? What kind of "storm" has it experienced in its brain? Today, specific areas of the brain that have "storms" have been highlighted and repeatedly verified by scientists.
Not long ago, Zhu Yingjie, a researcher at the Institute of Brain Cognition and Brain Diseases of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Chen Xiaoke, a professor of biology at Stanford University, found that there is a key brain area in the brain that dynamically assesses the importance of external information – next to the thalamus Nuclear (PVT), the brain region is able to assess the importance of events in different environmental and physiological conditions, thus helping us make the right choices.
Using optogenetic techniques in combination with electrophysiology and fiber-optic recording techniques, they first discovered that in the mouse brain, there is a group of neurons that can encode the importance of external information (ie, "biological significance"). These neuronal activities in the PVT brain region in the middle of the brain reflect the importance of external stimuli and dynamically change with the internal physiological state and the external environment, thus controlling learning ability. The research results have been published in the long-formed form of the international top journal Science.
“The importance of judging information is a high-level brain function that helps people better adapt to the environment and control people's attention and learning ability. This discovery is how people can improve their brain's cognitive and learning ability in the future. It has laid an important foundation and has a breakthrough in the understanding and treatment of the general population and patients with brain diseases," said Zhu Yingjie.
Brain regions in the brain that assess the importance of information
All the time, we will accept a lot of information, "bombing", why would you extract the most important information from the mass of information and respond accordingly?
"This is a fundamental problem faced by the brain information processing." Zhu Yingjie said, after the international scientific community generally believe PVT regulation of negative emotions, but they are for the same brain region, the event raised --PVT dynamic coding experimentally demonstrated an important subversive of the concept.
"This important study expands our understanding of the function of the hypothalamus, they discovered the important influence of the neural mechanisms of learning and memory. The work will cause widespread concern in the field of brain and cognitive brain disease research, and attract more researchers to explore this PVT The function of an important brain area," commented Robert Marlenka, an academician of the US Academy of Sciences and a tenured professor at Stanford University.
In the study, the researchers first trained mice to conduct olfactory Pavlov conditional learning, coupled different stimuli with rewards (water) or punishment (blowing), and then they found that PVT neurons in the middle of the brain were able to Activated by important events, whether it is a reward or a punitive stimulus. Researchers have also found that mice's response to odors is also intriguing – they first presented the mouse with a neutral odor that the mice did not like, and if it was the first time it could activate PVT; The PVT reaction gradually disappears when the odor reappears without any consequences; when the odor is coupled with a reward or punishment, the PVT can be activated again. In addition, the magnitude of PVT activation can also reflect the intensity of the stimulus—the reward for two drops of water is better than the reward for one drop of water to activate PVT.
"This is the first time that there are neurons in the thalamus that reflect the importance of external stimuli," said Chen Xiaoke, author of the paper.
For the first time, Zhu Yingjie conducted the application experiment of multi-channel electrophysiological recording technology on the animals in the activity. In 2016, at the beginning of the experiment, he encountered many technical problems, such as the electrical noise caused by the movement of mice, and so on. Therefore, he had to go to other laboratories for advice, and he also took some detours to overcome the problems one by one.
“The study is very complex and ingenious. The results show that a special nucleus of the thalamus, the paraventricular nucleus, plays an important role in tracking the significance of external stimuli. The brain uses this information to learn how to measure External stimuli and neglect or avoid certain stimuli.†Robert Malenka said that people have always believed that the thalamus is mainly involved in the treatment of sensory stimuli in the environment, and the international scientific community is more concerned with PVT than anxiety, fear, and depression. It is related to negative emotions, and this study discusses how the thalamus plays a key role in different forms of learning and memory. It can be foreseen that many common brain diseases are likely to involve dysfunction of the paraventricular nucleus, such as drug addiction and depression.
The brain will dynamically adjust to changes in the internal and external environment
After completing the first step of the experiment, Zhu Yingjie has been pondering: What is the significance of the importance of neural cell coding information? How to dig deep into this response mechanism? Subsequently, they further studied the dynamic response of the mechanism in the face of internal and external environmental changes by changing the internal physiological state and the external environment.
Studies have shown that the significance (importance) of external stimuli depends not only on the physical characteristics of the stimulus itself, but also on the animal's internal physiological state and the external environment in which it is located.
For example, when a mouse is hungry, food is a very important resource for it; but when it is full, the temptation of food is greatly reduced. In addition, changes in the external environment also affect the importance of the event. Even if the mouse is hungry, the food is in front of the eyes, but if a cat is kept by the food, then the cat's significance (importance) is greater than the food. The mouse suppresses the urge to eat, first avoiding the cat.
They repeatedly verified from different angles through fiber imaging recording technology and single-cell electrophysiological recording technology that PVT neurons can dynamically reflect the importance of animals according to their internal physiological state and external environment.
In addition, they also found a dynamic assessment mechanism for the “expected rewards†in the PVT brain area. That is to say, when a piece of cheese is found every day before the mouse reaches the refrigerator, it is used to this kind of reward. But one day, when the mouse did not see the cheese before the refrigerator, its "psychological loss" would activate PVT.
However, because the animal has the ability to learn, that is, if it is accustomed to the lack of cheese in front of the refrigerator, it will gradually become accustomed to this sense of loss and stop the behavior. Just like the "seven-year itch" between husband and wife, if you have been accustomed to the existence of the other side, the PVT reaction will tend to be dull, then the husband and wife may become a "family." However, if there is an external environment, it may reactivate the "heartbeat" of the first love.
However, researchers have also found that if they control the PVT activity of mice, the process of regression learning will become slower. Zhu Yingjie said, "It may be a hypothesis that human intervention may slow the process of emotional dissipation. Keeping PVT activity stable, there may be a 'heartbeat' between husband and wife."
Human intervention improves attention and learning ability
Since joining the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017, Zhu Yingjie has been devoted to the in-depth study of the brain's assessment of the importance of information. "Just find out the data, the discovery mechanism is not all, our ultimate goal is to solve the problem, so that scientific research can 'search useful'." Zhu Yingjie said.
An assessment of the importance of information helps focus attention on important events, thereby improving the learning ability of the event. Using optogenetic neuromodulation, the researchers found that PVT controls the rate and effect of learning in mice. In the conditional learning of olfactory Pavlov, mice were able to learn the coupling of scent and water reward, which was expressed as expected drowning. After the artificial use of optogenetic techniques to inhibit PVT activity, the rate and effect of this coupling learning is greatly impaired. This shows that PVT activities are very important for learning ability.
With the development of artificial intelligence, the machine learning method represented by deep learning is comparable to or even surpasses human beings in terms of audio-visual perception. However, at the S43 Xiangshan Science Conference held in August 2018, Academician Pu Muming of the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences pointed out that compared with the human brain learning ability, machine learning is obvious in terms of interpretability, reasoning ability, and ability to perform inferiority. gap.
Developing brain intelligence and letting machines learn from people is an important direction to improve the level of artificial intelligence. Academician Ye Yuru of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology also pointed out: "The goal is to theoretically simulate the brain's mechanisms and structures at multiple levels and develop a more universal artificial intelligence to address challenges including multitasking, self-learning and self-adaptation. â€
In recent years, brain science research is shifting from the traditional "reading the brain" to "controlling the brain." This research work is the "reading" and "control" of the PVT brain area.
"In the future, we will further study whether it is possible to enhance people's attention and enhance people's learning ability by enhancing PVT activities, which will open a window for conversion applications." Zhu Yingjie said.
In addition, the research findings of this brain mechanism may provide new research ideas for the combination of future brain-like intelligence and artificial intelligence technology. For example, in the era of big data, how to find important and effective information from massive information? In 10,000 faces, how can you quickly and accurately identify the person you are looking for through a biological feature? This requires finding the biological principles behind it. Industry experts said that by studying how the brain dynamically assesses the importance of external information and the inherent mechanism of biological salience, it will be of great significance for future development of brain intelligence, enhancement of brain-computer integration, and promotion of artificial intelligence technology.
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