During sleep, one brain region teaches another, converting novel data into enduring memories

In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they show that as the brain cycles through slow-wave and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, which happens about five times a night, the hippocampus teaches the neocortex what it learned, transforming novel, fleeting information into enduring memory.

This is not just a model of learning in local circuits in the brain. It's how one brain region can teach another brain region during sleep, a time when there is no guidance from the external world," says Schapiro, an assistant professor in Penn's Department of Psychology. "It's also a proposal for how we learn gracefully over time as our environment changes."

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New technique for decoding people's thoughts can now be done from a distance

Past mind-reading techniques relied on implanting electrodes deep in peoples' brains. The new method, described in a report posted 29 Sept. to the preprint database bioRxiv, instead relies on a noninvasive brain scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

fMRI tracks the flow of oxygenated blood through the brain, and because active brain cells need more energy and oxygen, this information provides an indirect measure of brain activity.

By its nature, this scanning method cannot capture real-time brain activity, since the electrical signals released by brain cells move much more quickly than blood moves through the brain.

But remarkably, the study authors found that they could still use this imperfect proxy measure to decode the semantic meaning of people's thoughts, although they couldn't produce word-for-word translations.

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Atmosphere of excitement as Europe’s JWST astronomers study climate on other planets
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