An important mechanism underlying human cognition is revealed by fascinating neuroscience research.

How does the brain adapt to different standards of mental challenge? New studies using neuroimaging show that brain activity in the case of more complex cognitive tasks is not only detailed but also more streamlined. The results suggest that the brain adjusts activity patterns to meet task requirements and allows for more efficient processing with mentally challenging activities. The study was published in the minutes of the National Academy of Sciences was established with the desire to understand how the brain manages various cognitive requirements.

Previous examinations by the same team provided the ability to reconstruct missing data from minimal measurements and raise questions about why the brain can generate such detailed and efficient activity patterns with limited input. "A few years ago, my co-author and doctoral student Lucy Owen and I came out as a pioneer in this research, where we found something very surprising," said Jeremy Manning, a professor of the Association of Psychology and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth University and director of Context Dynamics Laboratory.

"At the time, we worked with neurosurgery patients who had implanted electrodes in their brains to monitor seizure activity. The challenge in manipulating these records is that the brain contains about 10 billion neurons, but using statistical measurements on hundreds of wires in the brain. If hundreds of measurements from an essential random sampling of someone's entire brain find only hundreds of measurements, then accurate inferences from the whole brain's activity patterns give you enough packing, and in the millisecond range (in parallel to the best fMRI available today), Manning said. "If human language were equally efficient, I could tell you the details of all Wikipedia articles by speaking only 12 words."

” This first study mainly dealt with the "method" of the "method of the approach. In other words, we reported how we created the model, how we validated the assumptions, what situations affect accuracy, and more. But that gave us a deeper question that we were unable to answer at the time: why can we reconstruct what our whole brain does at a certain point, using a relatively small number of measurements? This led to a rabbit hole with additional questions regarding the basic characteristics of brain activity patterns. Our results are reported in this new study. "

To answer these deeper questions, researchers looked at data records collected from previous neuroimaging experiments to see how the brain coordinates its activity to meet cognitive requirements. These experiments included fMRI scans of participants with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and listening to a variety of audio recordings.

Some participants heard a consistent seven-minute story, while others heard a messy version of the story, in which either paragraphs or individual words were organized. The final group underwent a rest status scans without auditory stimuli. This should simulate a state of minimal cognitive involvement.

The goal was to analyze how brain activity changed between these different sources of cognitive demand. It actively processes the brain, and after a consistent history, organizes information and understands the story with highly complex tasks. In contrast, due to the low importance of information, brain tasks are not cognitively challenging in diseased conditions. Resting status conditions provided a basic measure of brain activity without specific cognitive tasks.

The authors sought to investigate two characteristics of brain activity: informationality and compressibility. The authors hypothesized that these properties can shift according to task complexity, allowing the brain to balance flexibility and efficiency.

To assess the information and compressibility of brain activity, researchers used advanced computing techniques. They measured informationality by analyzing specific information about the participant's brain activity task. Compression rates, on the other hand, are evaluated by examining how efficiently brain activity patterns can be displayed using fewer components or data points. A highly compressible brain pattern requires little information to reconstruct complete activity.

"In the world of machine learning, the ability to reconstruct detailed patterns from that part is called 'compression." "A highly compressible pattern can be accurately converted from a small splitter, such as reconstructing the full text of a novel from one word. Another related property is called "informative." This is related to the similarity of the "sequence of patterns" to the length of the novel.

Researchers found two important results. First, brain activity was more beneficial and compressible when participants had more stringent tasks to hear a consistent story compared to confused history and rest conditions. This shows that the brain creates detailed and beneficial activities in cognitive tasks at a higher level, which is also efficiently organized. For simple tasks, or when it's mild, brain activity is less organized, and there is less specific information.

Second, this study showed that these brain patterns become more beneficial and comprehensible when participants continued to listen to a consistent history. While the story developed, the brain appeared to be able to adapt to refinement and optimization of its activity patterns. This pattern was less pronounced under reduced conditions. The lack of a consistent structure in history probably resulted in less intellectual involvement, resulting in less organization in brain activity.

"In this study, we would have suspected that 'compression' and 'informationality' had changed in opposite directions," Manning said. "It's similar to being able to reconstruct a short novel from just a few words (probably under certain cognitive circumstances - with higher compression rates but less informational) or to being able to reconstruct a longer novel from more words (probably under different circumstances - with higher compression rates and higher informational). The fact that compression and informationality change in the same direction helped us to understand that these two aspects, the responses of our brains, can change independently of each other. "

Researchers also looked at various brain networks to determine whether certain areas are more affected by task complexity than others tasks. Instead, areas that are more complex cognitive functions respond to task requirements. If we are very devoted or thinking about what we are doing, our brains move into a mode where the activity patterns are highly compressed and very beneficial. In other words, "

" represents what we are doing and thinking. This is in a very efficient way that is also very robust and very efficient. This helped me understand why it is possible in a proper situation to infer accurately what the whole brain does from just a few hundred measurements. "

"When we stop being involved or think more about what we are doing, I think our brains will switch to a much more efficient mode with fewer patterns of activity, more beneficial and more idiosyncratic," Manning continued. "I'm not sure why this happens, but I have some speculations in the article."

Research provides valuable insights into the fundamental mechanisms of human cognition. However, this study, like all studies, has limitations. In this study, we examined only specific sentences of tasks and stimuli. This means that the outcome may not apply to any kind of mental activity. Additionally, researchers used methods to measure brain activity. This provides a detailed view of brain activity, but is limited by relatively slow sample rates compared to other techniques.

"We looked at data from over 100 participants who applied methods to measure brain activity using a series of experimental conditions," Manning said. "While generalizing 'all people and situations' is fascinating, the true test of these results is how well they replicate and generalize themselves, as with all studies. ”

Researchers suggest that future research can examine ways in which future research can adapt the brain ability to adapt information and compression rates to other cognitive processes such as decision-making, problem-solving, and creativity. Understanding these changes in brain properties in different contexts can provide new insight into the nature of perception and how the brain adapts to various mental challenges.

Despite its limitations, this study provides a compelling view of how the brain is organized to carry out the requirements of complex tasks. The results show that brain adaptability has the problem of not only activating more areas, but also fine-tuning its activity patterns to compensate for flexibility and efficiency.

In the long run, this line of research will help scientists to better understand how the brain supports cognitive function at a higher level and what happens if these processes break down. B. Under conditions such as dementia and traumatic brain injury. By identifying mechanisms that allow the brain to optimize activities for various tasks, researchers can ultimately develop new interventions or treatments to support cognitive health and recovery.

"We are deeply interested in understanding the basic questions about how our brains function and what makes us 'we." This work is a small part of a much broader literature aimed at revealing the neural foundations of thought," Manning said. "My website is www.context-lab.com. It contains links to all my lab publications, data, software, and open courses that are interesting for anyone looking to learn more about this."