Unravelling the mechanism for generation of the knowledge structure based on the neural decoding

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20H03554
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 51020:Cognitive and brain science-related
• Research Institution: University of Toyama
• Principal Investigator: Nomoto Masanori 富山大学, 学術研究部医学系, 准教授 (20636253)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: スキーマ / 睡眠 / ヒューリスティック / 閃き / アイドリングブレイン

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The brain has an excellent function of extracting meaning and concepts from experiences and creating "knowledge" that can be applied to other situations. Humans often experience moments when answers to problems they are working on come to them not during conscious effort, but during sleep or rest, i.e., during idling periods. By integrating calcium imaging and automatic sleep detection measurement techniques, our research revealed that brain activity during schema learning tasks is preplayed before testing. Additionally, we discovered that neuron activity in the cerebral cortex is entirely divided into distinct subgroups that are active during non-REM sleep and REM sleep, and these subgroups remain stable for more than a week.

Free Research Field

脳認知科学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

カルシウムイメージと自動睡眠判定計測技術とを統合し得られた本研究の結果は、我々が類似性を検知して既存の知識体系に新たな情報を組み込むためには、睡眠が重要であること、さらに、睡眠時には大脳皮質にノンレム睡眠とレム睡眠で特有の細胞集団があることから睡眠中の認知機能は覚醒時とは異なることが示唆された。