Every choice you make is this mysterious brain area in the order

Every choice you make is this mysterious brain area in the order

November 15, 2018 Source: Science and Technology Daily

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A fragrant cheese is placed in front of you, and any little mouse will rush to the delicious. But what kind of choice does the mouse make if there is a cat with a sinister appearance next to the cheese? Which is more important for food and life?

Now, Chinese scientists have discovered that the brain dynamically assesses the important mechanism for selecting this information. The brain first evaluates the importance of selecting relevant information and then makes choices through “calculation”. This important discovery recently published in the journal Science of the United States was completed by Zhu Yingjie, a researcher at the Institute of Brain Cognition and Brain Diseases, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Chen Xiaoke, a professor of biology at Stanford University. It is expected to help us understand the future. The key to determining the choices of people's success is to open another important area of ​​brain science research.

The study found that the brain has a key brain area that dynamically assesses the importance of external information—the paraventricular paraventricular nucleus (PVT), which can assess the importance of events in different environmental and physiological states to help us make the right choices. Using optogenetic techniques combined with electrophysiology and fiber-optic recording techniques, they first discovered that a group of neurons in the brain of mice can encode the importance of external information (ie, biological significance), which are located in the PVT brain region of the middle of the brain. Meta-activity can reflect the importance of external stimuli and dynamically change with the internal physiological state and external environment to control learning ability.

Zhu Yingjie told the Science and Technology Daily reporter that judging the importance of information is a high-level function of the brain, which can help people better adapt to the changing environment and control people's attention and learning ability. This discovery lays an important foundation for people's future research on how to improve their cognitive and learning ability. It has a breakthrough in the understanding and treatment of the general population and patients with brain diseases.

There is a brain area in the brain that assesses the importance of information.

In today's society, we are bombarding massive amounts of information all the time. Why do you extract the most important information from you in the vast amount of information and respond accordingly?

"This is a basic problem facing brain information processing." Zhu Yingjie said. Previously, the international scientific community generally believed that PVT regulates negative emotions. Zhu Yingjie et al. comprehensively studied the basic physiological functions of the same brain region, and proposed the concept of the importance of PVT dynamic coding events through experimental demonstration.

"This important study expands our understanding of thalamic function and discovers important neural mechanisms that influence learning and memory. This work will cause widespread attention in the field of brain cognition and brain disease research, and attract more researchers to explore PVT. The function of an important brain area," commented Robert Marenka, a tenured professor at Stanford University.

Researchers first train mice for olfactory Baproov conditional learning, coupling different scent stimuli with rewards (water) or punishment (blowing or electric shock) and discovering that PVT neurons located in the middle of the brain can be important. The event is activated, whether it is a reward or a punitive stimulus can activate PVT.

The joint team found the mouse's response to odors also interesting. For the first time, they presented the mice with an unpleasant neutral odor. If the odor was first exhibited, it could activate PVT; but if the odor reappeared without any consequences, the PVT reaction gradually disappeared; when the odor When 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. A reward of two drops of water is better than a reward of one drop of water to activate PVT, and a strong penalty (shock) can induce a greater PVT response than a weaker punishment (blowing).

"This is the first time scientists have discovered neurons in the thalamus that reflect the importance of external stimuli," said Chen Xiaoke, author of the paper. The reviewer of Science magazine commented that Zhu Yingjie et al.'s experiments proved the important role of PVT in coding saliency and controlling association learning effects. The experimental design in the paper is very clever, and the results and presentations are very clear, which is an important step in understanding the function of this mysterious brain area.

Human intervention may slow you into the "seven-year itch"

On the basis of discovering the brain regions in the brain that have an assessment of the importance of information, Zhu Yingjie and the team further pondered how it would be to dig deeper into this response mechanism.

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 there is a cat next to the food, then the cat's significance (importance) is greater than the food, small The mouse will suppress the urge to food and first avoid the cat.

They repeatedly verified from different angles through fiber imaging recording technology and single-cell electrophysiological recording technology that the activity of PVT neurons can dynamically reflect the importance of animals according to their internal physiological state and external environment.

Also the water used for rewards, this information can induce a greater PVT response in thirsty mice. When the mouse is in a weaker penalty (blowing) environment, the water reward information can induce a large PVT reaction; but if it is switched to a stronger penalty (shock) environment, it is also the water reward information. A small PVT reaction is excited. This shows that PVT activities can reflect the relative importance (significance) of rewards.

In addition, they also found a dynamic assessment mechanism for the expected rewards in the PVT brain region. 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. However, one day when the mouse went to the refrigerator but did not see the cheese, its "psychological loss" would activate PVT.

However, because the animal has the ability to regress, 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" of 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 inhibit PVT activity in mice, the process of regression learning becomes slower. In view of the above examples, human intervention may also slow down the process of emotional dissipation, so that both husband and wife have always maintained a “heartbeat”.

Open a window for attention and learning

In the past, the research of PVT in the international scientific community was mostly related to people's negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and depression. They experimentally demonstrated the concept of the importance of PVT dynamic coding events.

An assessment of the importance of information helps focus attention on important events, thereby improving the learning ability of the event. They used optogenetic neuromodulation to discover that PVT controls the rate and effect of learning in mice. In the conditional learning of the olfactory Baproov, the mice were able to learn the coupling of the scent to the 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.

In recent years, brain science research is shifting from the traditional "reading the brain" to "controlling the brain." The research work of Zhu Yingjie and others is the "reading" and "control" of the PVT brain area. By regulating the neural activity in the PVT brain region, they found that neuronal activity in this brain region controls the learning ability of mice. When optogenetic techniques were used to inhibit PVT activity, the rate and effectiveness of conjugate learning was greatly impaired.

"In the future, we will further study whether it is possible to enhance people's attention and enhance people's learning ability through enhanced PVT activities, which will open a window for conversion applications." Zhu Yingjie said. In addition, the research findings of this brain mechanism may also provide new research ideas for the combination of future brain-like intelligence and artificial intelligence technology.

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