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Our brains have billions of neurons grouped into different regions. These regions often work alone but sometimes must join forces. How do regions communicate selectively?

Stanford researchers may have solved a riddle about the inner workings of the brain, which consists of billions of neurons, organized into many different regions, with each region primarily responsible for different tasks.

The various regions of the brain often work independently, relying on the neurons inside that region to do their work. At other times, however, two regions must cooperate to accomplish the task at hand. The riddle is this: what mechanism allows two brain regions to communicate when they need to cooperate yet avoid interfering with one another when they must work alone?

In a paper published today in Nature Neuroscience, a team led by Stanford electrical engineering professor Krishna Shenoy reveals a previously unknown process that helps two brain regions cooperate when joint action is required to perform a task.

“This is among the first mechanisms reported in the literature for letting brain areas process information continuously but only communicate what they need to,” said Matthew T. Kaufman, who was a postdoctoral scholar in the Shenoy lab when he co-authored the paper.

(Source: engineering.stanford.edu)

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