Noisy Brain May Help Learning

Noisy Brain May Help Learning While most people need peace and quiet to cram for a test, the brain itself may need noise to learn, a recent study suggests. In experiments with monkeys, the researchers found that neural activities in the brain gradually change, even when nothing new is being learned. Challenging the monkeys to adjust their task triggered systematic changes in their neural activities on top of this background “noise.” The researchers said their findings suggest a new theory of how the brain learns. Traditional views held that learning occurs by rewiring neural circuitry that is normally stable. In contrast, the new theory proposes that neural circuitry is continually being rewired, even during behavior that does not change. According to the theory, this neural rewiring normally remains invisible at the behavioral level because the brain's motor cortex is redundant; many wiring configurations can accomplish the same behavior.