{"id":630942,"date":"2024-12-09T08:52:24","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T13:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=630942"},"modified":"2025-11-19T15:28:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:28:34","slug":"neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-630942","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-630942\/","title":{"rendered":"Sculpting the brain (without chisel or scalpel)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Scientists have developed a novel approach to human learning through noninvasive manipulation of brain activity patterns.<\/h2>\n<p>Imagine being able to inscribe a new pattern of activity into a person\u2019s brain that would allow for faster learning, or better treatment of psychiatric and developmental disorders such as depression or autism. Now imagine being able to do that in a way that doesn\u2019t require brain surgery or any physical manipulation. Sounds like science fiction?<\/p>\n<p>It still is. But that\u2019s exactly what <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sas.rochester.edu\/bcs\/people\/faculty\/iordan_coraline-rinn\/index.html\">Coraline Iordan<\/a>, an assistant professor of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sas.rochester.edu\/bcs\/index.html\">brain and cognitive sciences<\/a> and of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.urmc.rochester.edu\/neuroscience.aspx\">neuroscience<\/a> at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\">University of Rochester<\/a> has been working toward, showing for the first time that it can certainly be done for learning new visual categories of objects.<\/p>\n<p>Generally, learning happens when our brain changes through experience, study, or instruction. But Iordan and colleagues at Yale and Princeton successfully tested a novel approach for teaching the human brain to learn through external manipulation and neural feedback\u2014what they call the \u201csculpting\u201d of brain activity patterns. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2410445121\">research<\/a> appears in the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith our method not only can we nudge complex patterns around in the brain toward known ones, but also\u2014for the first time\u2014write directly a new pattern into the brain and measure what effect that has on a person\u2019s behavior,\u201d says lead author Iordan.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Brain sculpting\u2014a new approach to learning?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The scientists used real-time neuroimaging and second-by-second neurofeedback to modify how the brain represents and processes information about visual objects. Lying inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, study participants viewed objects projected onto a mirror above their heads, which looked like a small screen. The object<sub>\u00ad<\/sub>\u2014an abstract shape that some participants described as a petal, plant bulb, or butterfly\u2014pulsed gently on the participants\u2019 mirror until they managed to \u201cmove it\u201d by their own thought processes to the pattern of activity in their brain (monitored via fMRI in real time) that the scientists had previously chosen. The researchers instructed the participants to \u201cgenerate a mental state\u201d that would reduce the shape\u2019s oscillation but had not taught the study participants how to achieve such mental state.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the striking features of the study is that the neural responses and corresponding behavior to the new categories occurred without explicit awareness of those categories, showing that a long tradition of work in psychology on implicit\u00a0<em>processing<\/em>\u2014that is, the ability to respond to information meaningfully outside of awareness\u2014also extends to the learning and formation of new neural representations,\u201d says coauthor <a href=\"https:\/\/pni.princeton.edu\/people\/jonathan-cohen\">Jonathan Cohen<\/a>, a cognitive neuroscientist at Princeton University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have developed a novel approach to human learning through noninvasive manipulation of brain activity patterns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":942,"featured_media":630992,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[18672,28462,18572,16072],"class_list":["post-630942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-department-of-brain-and-cognitive-sciences","tag-department-of-neuroscience","tag-research-finding","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Sculpting the brain (without chisel or scalpel)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scientists have developed a novel approach to human learning through noninvasive manipulation of brain activity patterns.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-630942\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sculpting the brain (without chisel or scalpel)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Scientists have developed a novel approach to human learning through noninvasive manipulation of brain activity patterns.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-630942\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"News Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-12-09T13:52:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-19T20:28:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/fea-neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-DALLE-1200x630.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sandra Knispel\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sandra Knispel\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rochester.edu\\\/newscenter\\\/neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-630942\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rochester.edu\\\/newscenter\\\/neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-630942\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sandra Knispel\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rochester.edu\\\/newscenter\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/48a5dd20d1ade85ff52a0babb9a550a5\"},\"headline\":\"Sculpting the brain (without chisel or scalpel)\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-12-09T13:52:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-11-19T20:28:34+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rochester.edu\\\/newscenter\\\/neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-630942\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":442,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rochester.edu\\\/newscenter\\\/neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-630942\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rochester.edu\\\/newscenter\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/12\\\/fea-neural-sculpting-brain-activity-patterns-DALLE.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences\",\"Department of Neuroscience\",\"research finding\",\"School of Arts and Sciences\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Science &amp; 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