brain plasticity: neurons multitask (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, November 10, 2014, 17:33 (3461 days ago) @ David Turell

""We were surprised to find that there were no specialized populations among neurons in the PPC that we studied," says Churchland. Instead, the team found that PPC neurons were multitasking, each one responding to more than one stimulus. No distinct classes emerged among the more than 300 neurons they measured. "Each neuron had its own signature for how it responded - no two were alike - which means that we couldn't lump them together into categories."-"Churchland proposes that neurons such as these, which are able to multitask, may offer the brain a flexible way to combine responses. "This changes the way our team thinks about how neurons are used and work together," she says. Based on these results, Churchland says, researchers may want to question the often used method of averaging the responses of different neurons to describe their collective behavior, under the assumption that anatomically distinct groups of neurons will respond to stimuli in the same way. More broadly, the research suggests a new way of thinking about how neurons behave. In this view, "it is no longer single neurons making sense of a behavior, but the whole group, integrating multiple signals," says Churchland"-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-neurons-multitask-importance-specialization.html-Many brain areas may not be fully specialized. No computer can be like this. AI may not be possible.