Neuroscience News
How does our brain know that a mug is used for drinking, or that a key fits a lock?
O brain human organizes information into continuous topographic maps, thus providing easy readings from one brain region to another, thus promoting cognitive efficiency.
A new study, coordinated by the University of Coimbra, reveals new data about the brain organization of objects we manipulate daily.
The analysis presents the maps contenttopics. It’s a new concept: they are brain maps that demonstrate how different categories of information are spatially organized in the brain.
These maps “reveal how the brain spatially encodes information – for example, the way we grasp and manipulate tools – and organizes knowledge about objects in continuous patterns, similar to geographic maps, throughout the cerebral cortex”, reveals the research coordinator, Jorge Almeida.
The neuroscientist clarifies that they discovered that “information related to objects is not randomly distributed; on the contrary, it is organized into structured maps – the aforementioned content-topic maps – where neighboring regions of the cortex represent objects with similar properties”.
“As we move across the brain surface, we can observe a smooth and continuous transition in the way different aspects of these object properties are represented”, adds the professor.
The central question
There was a question that triggered this discovery: How does our brain know that a mug is used for drinking, that a hammer is used for hammering and that a key fits in a lock?
The human brain needs to process different information: the shape of the object, the material of the object and the function of the object, for example.
To unravel this process, the research team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that allows the collection of images of the brain with precision, seeking to “understand how the brain of the participants in this study processed a sequence of manipulable objects, presented visually and ordered according to dimensions defined in previous studies that our team carried out”, contextualizes Jorge Almeida.
After this step, the research team used advanced data analysis techniques to detect how brain activity changed systematically with different levels of these object-related dimensions.
This work with the participants managed to demonstrate that “content-topic maps are continuous, being consistent between participants, since an individual’s maps can be predicted based on the maps of others”, highlights Jorge Almeida.
These maps “are independent for each dimension, which means there are distinct maps for different object properties; and they are also independent of simple sensory characteristics, since purely sensory maps cannot completely explain these maps relating to the objects we use”, continues the expert.
In other words, continues Jorge, “the brain prefers to organize information in a way that increases neural efficiency.”
“Just as geographic maps efficiently convey complex information about the environment, these topographic maps of the brain provide quick and effective readings of information processing in each brain area,” he adds, in a statement sent to ZAP.
Jorge Almeida also highlights the relevance of these maps for the cognitive flexibility, since they “allow the brain to distinguish between objects while generalizing to similar objects – a fundamental feature of human intelligence”.
For the neuroscientist, who has dedicated himself to studying the brain for almost two decades, “these results shed new light on how the internal architecture of the brain transforms our experience into knowledge, revealing that the same mapping principles that shape the way we see the world can also support the way we understand it”.
Jorge Almeida also highlights the importance of discoveries made by fundamental science for the advancement of knowledge: “without fundamental science, it is not possible to move towards applicable science; we need to first know how the brain works before moving towards any therapeutic approach”.
