News Finding: "These findings could be the basis for novel rehabilitation procedures for the many neural disorders that are characterized by improper neural activity," Yu said.
Paper Finding: 2 ), indicating that it was difficult to learn to generate new co-modulation patterns, even when those patterns would have led to improved performance in the task.
News Context: Byron M. Yu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, believes this work demonstrates the utility of BCI for basic scientific studies that will eventually impact people's lives. "These findings could be the basis for novel rehabilitation procedures for the many neural disorders that are characterized by improper neural activity," Yu said. "Restoring function might require a person to generate a new pattern of neural activity.
Paper Context: For outsidemanifold perturbations, BCI performance remained impaired (blue histograms in Fig. 2 ), indicating that it was difficult to learn to generate new co-modulation patterns, even when those patterns would have led to improved performance in the task. 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.