A new study by neuroscientists in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT shows how the brain encodes information throughout the decision-making process to keep options clearly in mind and to ensure that chosen and unchosen options are remembered. The key, the researchers show in the journal iScience, is that the brain convenes ensembles to produce coordinated patterns of electrical activity that distinctly represent and sort options, both during consideration and after choice. 'It keeps different neural ensembles, different thoughts, distinct from one another, preventing interference between them,' says senior author Earl K. Miller, Picower Professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. To conduct the study, Li, Miller, and their team trained two animals to play a game in which they had to look in the direction of one of two indicated targets on a screen, based on which target was assigned the higher reward value. Importantly, the two options were...
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