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: For monkey J, we often alternated perturbation types across consecutive days.
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: In other words, g OM u t is a permuted version of u t . For monkey J, we often alternated perturbation types across consecutive days. The total number possible g WM is 10 factorial (3,628,800).