Researchers has discovered neurons that can not only replay the past events but can also anticipate future during sleep.
According to Neuroscience, a research done by the Rice University and the University of Michigan on rat’s hippocampal activity has found that neurons made spatial representations and prepare for future tasks.
The team of the researchers studied a process by with the specialized neurons produce a representation of the world after a new experience.
Kamran Diba corresponding author on the study found, “Neurons in the visual cortex fire when presented with the appropriate visual stimulus. The neurons we’re studying show place preferences.”
Rice neuroscientist Caleb Kemere noted, “For the first time in this paper, we observed how these individual neurons stabilize spatial representations during rest periods.”
He noted, “We imagined that some neurons might change their representations, reflecting the experience we’ve all had of waking up with a new understanding of a problem.”
Kemere further added, “Showing this, however, required that we track how individual neurons achieve spatial tuning, i.e., the process by which the brain learns to navigate a new route or environment.”
Kemere explained, “We can see these other changes occurring during sleep, and when we put the animals back in the environment a second time, we can validate that these changes really do reflect something that was learned while the animals were asleep. It’s as if the second exposure to the space actually happens while the animal is sleeping.”
