Tag Archives: learning

Your Brain Enjoys Learning

Information is something that your brain genuinely craves and when it learns something new it gives us a little reward. New research as looked into why information is its own reward.

This preference for knowledge about the future was intimately linked to the monkeys’ desire for water. The same neurons in the middle of their brains signalled their expectations of both rewards – the watery prizes and knowledge about them.

All the neurons in question release the signalling chemical dopamine. While the monkeys were making their choices, Bromberg-Martin and Hikosaka recorded the activity of 47 dopamine neurons in their midbrains. These neurons became very excited when the monkeys saw a symbol that predicted a large amount of water, while the symbol that cued a smaller drink inhibited the neurons. The same dopamine neurons were excited during trials where the monkey only saw the symbol that heralded forthcoming information, and they were inhibited if they monkey only saw the other non-informative symbol.

Learning Disability Treatment Breakthrough

Some Toronto-based researchers have found a way to treat learning disabilities using drugs. This seems kinda weird to me, but let’s see what happens!

To find out how important the protein was to learning, the researchers decided to breed mice that were missing the gene that makes the Neto1 protein and then evaluate the cognitive abilities of those mice.

They found that the altered mice had no obvious physical or behavioural problems but did have trouble learning new skills compared to normal mice.

The mice missing Neto1 failed a simple test in which they were made to swim through a water maze and find a hidden safety platform that would get them out of the water. Normal mice swimming through the maze were able to find the platform faster with each try, but the mice missing Neto1 got lost every time and did not seem to remember how to find the platform.