News Finding: 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.
Paper Finding: We considered five alternative explanations for the difference in learnability.
News Context: "It helps scientists study the dynamics of brain circuits that may explain the neural basis of learning." 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.
Paper Context: These results show that the intrinsic manifold was a reliable predictor of the learnability of a BCI mapping: new BCI mappings that were within the intrinsic manifold were more learnable than those outside of it. We considered five alternative explanations for the difference in learnability. We ensured that the initial performance impairments were equivalent for the two perturbation types (Fig.