News Finding: Because the existing brain patterns likely reflect how the neurons are interconnected, the results suggest that the connectivity among neurons shapes learning.
Paper Finding: 3b also shows that the perturbations were not pure workspace rotations.
News Context: 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. 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.
Paper Context: Incidentally, Fig. 3b also shows that the perturbations were not pure workspace rotations. If that were the case, the angles between control spaces would have been zero, not in the range of 40-80u as shown.