Experiments Replace Experience

Researchers may have found a way for people to learn skills . . . without trying at all.

Ever wanted to learn how to play an instrument, but just never had the time? Ever wanted to learn how to play a sport, but did not have the coordination? Luckily for you, you might not have to worry about finding the time or maintaining enough coordination to labor through these skills.

Boston University’s very own professor of neuroscience Dr. Takeo Watanabe and his team of researchers at BU and at Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed a “neurofeedback” method that can potentially enable you to learn a skill without exerting any physical effort at all.

This idea is built upon the natural phenomenon of visual perceptual learning, co-researcher Kazuhisa Shibata said in an email interview. She explained the theory using an analogy to trained jewelers.

“Experienced jewelers can rapidly classify diamonds that appear very similar to the novices into different grades with high precision. Such a feat is possible because the expert’s eyes are trained through practice and experience. Such experience-induced improvement is called visual perceptual learning.”

AN EVER-CHANGING BRAIN

Shibata explains further that in order for this type of learning to occur, the brain must maintain a certain amount of “neural plasticity.”  Long after most of the brain development has ceased, repeated exposure or training can improve visual abilities and cause “neural reorganizations” in the matured brain. These neural changes, or “reorganizations,” have coined the term “neural plasticity,” which measures the extent to which a brain can absorb information and allow these neural changes to occur.

After discovering how visual perceptual learning occurs through neural plasticity, several obstacles arose while trying to utilize its abilities. One in particular came about when visual perceptual learning contradicted the traditional idea that the early visual cortex is thought to be hard-wired after development, leaving little to no room for neural plasticity to take root.

Previous studies have attempted to navigate their way around this obstacle by using what they called the correlation approach. This approach examines how changes in brain activity are correlated with improvements in visual performance by repetitive training. The problem with this approach is that it does not shed light on the cause-and-effect relationship between these changes in the brain and the performance of each task by training; rather, it can only tells us that they occurred around the same time, according to Shibata.

“Assume that activity in the brain area X changed while visual perceptual learning had been observed after extensive training. Does this indicate that the activity change in brain area X caused the improvement?” Shibata asked. “The answer is no, because it is impossible to determine that visual perceptual learning caused the activity change. This ambiguity cannot be solved with the correlation approach since the approach tells us about a relationship between the behavioral and neural changes but not about a cause-and-effect relationship between the two.”

Shibata explained that it is comparable observing two separate phenomena: The Red Sox won a game and the sales of Samuel Adams beer went up. This is the correlation approach; one cannot determine that the Red Sox’ win caused these sales to increase, only that they happened to occur around the same time.

MUTATING METHODS

In order to solve this issue, the team had to come up with a method in which they could manipulate a pattern within the early visual cortex without any visual stimulation. This method would make it possible to establish whether or not repetitive induction of a specific pattern of activity causes visual perceptual learning related to that pattern because it observes the two phenomena separately. The researchers soon discovered that the key to this approach lay in the newly created decoded neurofeedback method or “decnef.”

“Decnef is a method that allows us to link neural activity patterns to a target state, or the ‘skill’ pattern in which we want to replicate,” the researchers said their documentary video.

They began the experiment by focusing their subjects’ attention on the center of a computer display and were asked to conduct a visual task. The subjects, mostly college students, were then expected to “discriminate” the orientation of the presented visual texture pattern, called a Gabor patch. The activation patterns within the subjects’ visual cortex was then measured and recorded by fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging. That one specific orientation was chosen as the target pattern.

The next step involved the neurofeedback induction training. The subjects were asked to adjust their own activation patterns without visual stimulation and without moving their bodies until it matched the target pattern.

“I thought this was the most difficult part of the study,” Shibata said. “How can we control activation patterns in a specific area of our brain?”

Though it seemed impossible, they pressed on. The subjects attempted to somehow control their brain activity, and each time a new pattern appeared the team would compare it to the target pattern to see how closely it matched. Once the pattern created by the subjects significantly resembled the target pattern, it would be “fed back” to them in the form of visual stimulus.

After several repetitions of this process, the subjects were asked to recreate the pattern by themselves without the help of the visual stimulus and without any knowledge of what the target pattern was based on.

“We conducted this induction training in 10 days. At the beginning, of course, the subjects had no idea about how to do it. But, to my surprise, they gradually built up their own way to make the similarity between their activation pattern and the target pattern larger,” Shibata said. “I had not imagined that humans could achieve such a feat!”

Before and after this training, the subject’s performance was measured in the Grating Stimulus Discrimination Task and was analyzed for how it had changed.

LEARNING THROUGH VISION

The researchers discovered that the subjects’ discrimination performance significantly improved in generating the target orientation. “The result indicated that repeated induction of a particular activation pattern leads to plasticity in the visual cortex, concluding that it is possible for the brain to learn skills through this repetitious “feedback,” thus validating the hypothesis that visual perceptual learning can occur within the human brain.

Another interesting discovery was that the “subject’s discrimination performance improved without awareness of the corresponding target stimulus,” meaning that the person’s skills improved without consciously acting on or thinking about it.

BU students had differing opinions about this research project at BU.

“Our generation is too focused on technology,” said Tiegan Hatch, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Although it has allowed us to move to places we never imagined, it also stunts us in other ways. Learning something without physical effort allows humans to be rewarded for wanting instant gratification. Society is too distracted with no effort ideals.

“Slogans like, ‘Lose 10 pounds in one week without hitting the gym!’ have brainwashed us to think that we can get whatever we want with little effort. We lose track of what’s really important and that’s the experience.

“You cannot install an experience into someone scientifically. That’s destroying the definition of the word ‘experience.’ It makes it sound less human and I personally do not want to be treated like a computer.”

Anisha Vinod, a sophomore in CAS, said she disagreed with Hatch.

“If we close our minds to new research and ability, we are killing progress,” she said. “The purpose of research and technology is to revolutionize the human experience. This is all science fiction thinking to assume it would turn us into some sort of robot society.

“This research could, instead, open our minds to what we are capable of and expand the amount of energy and intellect we use. Just because it is scientifically founded doesn’t mean that it is anti-human at all. Historically speaking, humans have been able to adapt and grow when society and implemented new ways of communicating, etc.”

Despite speculative controversy, the researchers say decnef will be used “as an important method for neuroscientific research and as a technical application to try and find new treatment methods for diseases that currently have no efficient cures.”

For more Science Tuesday, check out our blog: http://freepblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/violence-on-the-brain/