Nature: discovering brain fault tolerance mechanisms

In a new study, researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States found a fault-tolerant mechanism in the mouse brain. In experiments with mice, their findings and their effects help to further understand how the brain works. The relevant research results were published online in the Nature Journal on April 14, 2016, and the paper titled "Robust neuronal dynamics in premotor cortex during motor planning".

In response to this study, Byron Yu from Carnegie Mellon University published a news review article titled “Neuroscience: Fault tolerance in the brain” in the journal Nature , explaining how the research was conducted.

To help ensure data integrity in computer systems, engineers have developed many different fault-tolerant strategies, such as error correction programs that allow packets to be resent when errors are found, redundant hard drives or processor mirroring systems—all These strategies are designed to ensure that data is maintained or used as intended. Today, this also seems to apply to the mouse brain. In this new study, the researchers found a mirroring mechanism between the two brain hemispheres in mice. In this mechanism, if information is lost, the data is exchanged from one brain hemisphere to another. In the hemisphere.

Imagine learning how to bounce basketball, but suddenly hit a head by a basketball player - you may forget how to bounce basketball in a second or two, but then you return to normal, you continue to play. This is what the researchers are researching - they teach mice how to move their tongues in some way to get food, and then let the mutation in the brain region responsible for maintaining this ability in only one hemisphere be lost. ability. The mouse only forgot this ability for a moment, but after only a few seconds, it remembered it again. The researchers found that this happens because the memory data of this licking tongue skill is stored in two brain hemispheres - when the memory data is lost in one brain hemisphere, it automatically recovers from the other hemisphere .

The researchers reacted to blue light by constructing brain cells in the region of the genetically engineered mouse, the premotor cortex (the brain region involved in the implementation of this tongue-splitting technique). This fault-tolerant system in the rat brain. This allows the researcher to arbitrarily activate and deactivate this area of ​​a brain hemisphere. Closing this area of ​​a hemisphere inhibits nerve activity, thereby losing this licking tongue skill, and then, when the researchers allow the brain areas to function again, they observe that data is exchanged from another hemisphere. To test this theory, the researchers lost the two hemispheres of the mouse, thereby preventing data exchange, and found that this would prevent this fault-tolerant mechanism. Similarly, simultaneously erasing the data in both brain hemispheres will permanently prevent the ability to recover this licking tongue skill because there is no more backup data available for access.