Human Brain Uses Computer-like Mechanism to Adapt to New Situations

The human brain is a remarkable organ. It allows us to interact with the world and make sense of situations we've never encountered before. For example, a co-worker can adapt in a different job role. Yet exactly what mechanism our brain uses to adapt to these new situations has long been a mystery. Now, scientists have discovered that the brain relies on a method similar to the "pointer" system used by computers.

In a computer, "pointers" are used to tell the machine where to look for information stored elsewhere in the system to replace a variable. This same system may just be used in the human brain. For example, in the sentence "I want to desk you," we can understanding the word "desk" is being used as a verb even though our past experience with the word has been as a noun.

"The fact that you understand that the sentence is grammatically well formed means you can process these completely novel inputs," said Randall O'Reilly, one of the researchers, in a news release. "But in the past when we've tried to get computer models of a brain to do that, we haven't been successful."

In order to find out a little bit more about how the human brain accomplishes this feat, the researchers examined the connections in the brain. They found that the connection in the brain between the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia could play a similar role to the pointers used in computer science. They then added new information about how the connections between these two regions of the brain could work into their model of the brain.

The results were astonishing. With the new information, the model could be trained to understand simple sentences using a select group of words. After this training period, the researchers fed the model new sentences using familiar words in novel ways. It turned out that the model could still understand the sentence structure--much like a human.

The findings reveal that this pointer system is indeed at play in the brain. That said, it's not exactly like the system found in a computer. For example, the pointer-like system must still be learned in the human brain while a computer can be programmed to understand. Even so, the findings reveal a little bit more about how the brain works, which could help with future research.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.