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: Two additional lines of evidence show that BCI control was more learnable when using within-manifold perturbations than outside-manifold perturbations.
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: These results support our hypothesis that the structure of a network determines which patterns of neural activity (and corresponding behaviours) a subject can readily learn to generate. Two additional lines of evidence show that BCI control was more learnable when using within-manifold perturbations than outside-manifold perturbations. First, perturbation types differed in their after-effects.