The brain 'plays' our behaviors like a music box

There’s something truly remarkable about the brain. Its complexity, intricacy, and power are unparalleled in the world of biological wonders. As we continue to explore its depths, we unearth revelations that shift our understanding of cognitive processes. One recent discovery compares the brain’s action sequencing to the workings of a music box.

Experts in neuroscience have identified special brain cells that create multiple coordinate systems. These systems act as a GPS of sorts, helping us understand “where we are” in a sequence of actions.

Music box of brain cells

The beauty of it? It’s akin to a music box playing different tones, where our brain cells can execute different action sequences.

The research was led by experts at the University of Oxford and the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London (UCL).

The findings significantly contribute to our understanding of the complexity of brain functions, especially in planning and reasoning.

More importantly, it provides a valuable lens to examine psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, where these processes often go awry.

Power of behavioral mapping

The research began with an intricate study involving mice as they learned different behavioral sequences, which, despite their variability, shared a consistent structure.

This approach allowed scientists to uncover how mice generalize these structures to new tasks, demonstrating a hallmark of intelligent behavior.

“Every day we solve new problems by generalizing from our knowledge,” said Dr. Mohamady El Gaby, first author on the study and postdoctoral neuroscientist at UCL and Oxford.

“Take cooking for example. When faced with a new recipe, you are able to use your background knowledge of similar recipes to infer what steps are needed, even if you have never made the meal before.”

Music box analogy for brain

The music box analogy highlighted the researchers’ goal: to understand how the brain achieves such problem-solving feats at a cellular level and to infer the algorithms used to accomplish them.

The researchers introduced mice to a set of four goal locations (A, B, C, and D) arranged in a loop. Despite the sequences varying in detail, the overall structure remained unchanged.

“After experiencing enough sequences, the mice did something remarkable – they guessed a part of the sequence they had never experienced before,” noted Dr. El Gaby.

“When reaching D in a new location for the first time, they knew to go straight back to A. This action couldn’t have been remembered, since it was never experienced in the first place!”

This finding provided compelling evidence that the mice could comprehend the task’s general structure and track their “position” within behavioral coordinates.

These insights offer a deeper look at how the brain’s functional algorithms operate at a cellular level, facilitating complex, adaptive behaviors.

Recording brain activity

To explore in great detail how the brain learns and tracks task structures, the researchers employed advanced silicon probes to record the activity of multiple individual cells in the medial frontal cortex of mice.

The findings were compelling. The cells collectively mapped the animal’s “goal progress,” with one cell firing when the mouse was, for example, 70% of the way to its goal, regardless of the goal’s specific location or distance.

“We found that the cells tracked the animal’s behavioral position relative to concrete actions,” said Dr. El Gaby.

“If we think of the cooking analogy, the cells cared about progress towards subgoals such as chopping the vegetables. A subset of the cells were also tuned to map the progress towards the overall goal, such as finishing preparing the meal.”

These “goal progress” cells acted as flexible building blocks, creating a behavioral coordinate system that supported task execution.

Brain’s music box mechanism

The research revealed that these cells form multiple coordinate systems, each indicating the animal’s location relative to a specific action.

The researchers likened this system to the mechanical nature of a music box, which can be configured to play any sequence of tones.

In the same way, the brain can “play” behavioral actions through these coordinate systems, demonstrating its remarkable ability to execute distinct action sequences with precision and flexibility.

Implications for future research

The implications of this discovery reach far beyond basic neuroscience. The research team is now collaborating with psychiatrists to apply these findings to studies on psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia.

Preliminary evidence suggests that similar activity patterns occur in human brains, offering a potential explanation for why individuals with schizophrenia may misjudge their progress toward goals.

This research opens new doors for understanding the brain’s inner workings and its role in planning, reasoning, and behavior tracking.

Future investigations aim to explore how these neural patterns develop and adapt during new learning experiences, shedding light on both healthy and disordered cognitive processes.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

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