AI Insight
MIT neuroscientists have identified a brain circuit that connects a sensory decision-making region with another area that monitors how much sensory information has recently changed. This circuit helps the brain balance processing new incoming sensory data while simultaneously using past experience to make predictions about current events. The discovery reveals a neural mechanism for how the brain adapts to the rapidly changing nature of sensory information in real-time environments.
Why it matters
Understanding this circuit could provide insights into how the brain makes accurate judgments in dynamic environments and may help explain decision-making deficits in neurological conditions. The findings could inform development of better artificial intelligence systems that need to balance new information with prior context.
Understand the Science
A brain must constantly cope with the highly variable, fast-paced nature of the world when trying to judge what’s going on around it. On the one hand, it has to be open to whatever new sensory information may come its way, but on the other hand, just to keep up, it has to try to leverage prior experience to make predictions about what seems to be happening. In a new study in Science, MIT neuroscientists identify a circuit that links a sensory decision-making region with one that advises it on how much sensory information has just changed.
Source: Brain circuit keeps tabs on what just happened to aid judgment of what's happening now