News Finding: The harder-to-learn patterns were different from any of the pre-existing patterns, whereas the easier-to-learn patterns were combinations of pre-existing brain patterns.
Paper Finding: This modification allowed us to perform the two different types of perturbation.
News Context: The results showed that the subjects learned to generate some neural activity patterns more easily than others, since they only sometimes achieved accurate cursor movements. The harder-to-learn patterns were different from any of the pre-existing patterns, whereas the easier-to-learn patterns were combinations of pre-existing brain patterns. Because the existing brain patterns likely reflect how the neurons are interconnected, the results suggest that the connectivity among neurons shapes learning.
Paper Context: The data collected during the calibration sessions had 1,470 6 325 (monkey J, mean 6 standard deviation) and 1,379 6 157 (monkey L) samples. This modification allowed us to perform the two different types of perturbation. We observed that performance with our modified Kalman filter is qualitatively similar to performance with a standard Kalman filter (data not shown).