20 Jan First Steps in Elucidating How A Thought Becomes An Action

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Avgusta Shestyuk
Senior researcher
Helen Wills Neuroscience
UC Berkeley

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: The paper describes neural activity that serves as a glue between perception and action, and that essentially reflects the process of thinking and deliberating about a particular problem and coming up with the response. This sustained activity is even present when we fail to generate a response but when we are still deliberating and thinking about it (that is we are not only tracking the process of response generation but the process of thinking about the response).

It is centered in the prefrontal cortex, which is known for higher order cortical processes, but it is also present in other brain regions, suggesting a distributed network of activity required for us to complete different tasks.

What is also unique about our study is that we were able to show that this type of activity is universal as it is present across multiple tasks of different complexity. This sustained stimulus-to-response activity is also multi-tasking – different local areas of the prefrontal cortex perform different operations in the stimulus-to-response window.

MedicalResearch.com: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?

Response: This is the first step in trying to understand mechanisms of how we solve complex problems​.

MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Response: Right now we are looking at the process, but future research will focus on how the prefrontal cortex coordinates distributed brain networks during the deliberation and whether we can decode the content of these thought processes (i.e., can we analyze this sustained brain activity and determine what action/behavior a person will perform next). This would be useful for brain-machine interface devices that help patients with various neurological problems such as stroke, locked-in syndrome, etc.

Disclosures:  Funded by:

National Science Foundation, NIH/National Institute of Mental Health, NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke 

MedicalResearch.com: Thank you for your contribution to the MedicalResearch.com community.

Citation:

Persistent neuronal activity in human prefrontal cortex links perception and action

Matar Haller, John Case, Nathan E. Crone, Edward F. Chang, David King-Stephens, Kenneth D. Laxer, Peter B. Weber, Josef Parvizi, Robert T. Knight & Avgusta Y. Shestyuk
Nature Human Behaviour2, 80–91 (2018)
doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0267-2
Published December 18 2017

Note: Content is Not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care provider regarding your specific medical condition and questions.

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Last Updated on January 20, 2018 by Marie Benz MD FAAD