Flexible brain circuits can switch between different tasks
As we move through everyday life, our brains engage in a huge variety of cognitive tasks. For example, during a grocery run, we might have to recall the items for a recipe, remember where the clerk said the flour was located and count out money to pay.
Everyday life demands a myriad of cognitive tasks, from recalling grocery items to counting money at checkout. Scientists have theorized that the brain contains specialized clusters of neurons, or modules, that perform the same computations across various tasks. This modularity may explain the brain's ability to handle numerous functions with ease.
A new MIT study of mice has provided the first evidence of these flexible modules in the prefrontal cortex. These neurons can store either sensory input or action plans in working memory. Yuma Osako, the lead author of the study, explains that the brain does not dedicate separate neuron groups for every type of information. Instead, it uses the same neuronal populations to perform identical computations on different kinds of information.
This means the same cluster of neurons can hold both an action and a sensory stimulus in working memory.
The researchers discovered that in the parietal cortex, neurons exclusively store a memory of the sensory tone. However, in the prefrontal cortex, they identified a cluster of neurons capable of switching between memory of the tone and planning an action. This ability to reuse these neural clusters for different purposes allows the brain to flexibly store various types of information. The findings support the theory that reusable circuits enable the brain to mix and match components to generate a wide range of behaviors.
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