Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have applied a visualization technique to represent brain activity related to visual perception as geometric patterns. They visualized different ways such as neuronal activity in constant change in the temporal and frontal lobes of the brain during the recognition of objects and memories remembering. This achievement promises greater extraction of brain activity observed in various aspects of daily life.
Our daily life implies many processes, such as getting up, verifying time, leaving the house, getting to the office and starting work. Behind the scene, brain neurons are active and process complicated tasks. In July 2023, this research team developed and published the analysis of main components in the regression subspace (PCAR) to easily visualize cerebral neuronal activity in various situations. PCAR can determine the most critical events and if there are multiple activities in the observed data of neuronal brain activity.
In this study, researchers applied PCAR to neuronal activity in a wide range of brain regions, from the temporal to frontal lobes and the subcortical structures connected to monkeys. They analyzed four behavioral situations, including activities to remember the location of objects by observing the figures and activities presented where the figure presented is a food signal. The results showed that the temporal regions involved in the recognition of objects had a higher percentage of geometric figures near the circles. In contrast, the hippocampus and the frontal lobe, which are considered memory regions, had a greater appearance of curved and straight geometric patterns.
The classification of neuronal activity based on geometric figures revealed that the activity of neuronal populations in the processes of perception, memory and the visual information judgment change from moment to moment and is classified into different geometric figures.
Applying pcar to the neuronal activity of the whole brain can achieve real -time images of your activity constantly changing. This achievement is expected to lead to the discovery of a new information processing mechanism in the brain.
This study was supported by JSPS Kakenhi (subsidy numbers 420 JP: 15H05374, 22H04832), JST MOONSHOT R & D JPMJMS2294 (HY) and the National Foundation of Natural Sciences of China (GRANT 32271088) (YN).