The coordinated activity of brain cells, like birds flying in formation, helps us behave intelligently in new situations, according to a study led by Cedars-Sinai investigators. The work, in is the first to illuminate the neurological processes known as abstraction and inference in the human brain. "Abstraction allows us to ignore irrelevant details and focus on the information we need in order to act, and inference is the use of knowledge to make educated guesses about the world around us," said Ueli Rutishauser, Ph.
D., professor and Board of Governors Chair in Neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai and co-corresponding author of the study. "Both are important parts of cognition and learning.
" Humans often use these two cognitive processes together to rapidly learn about and act appropriately in new environments. One example of this is an American driver who rents a car in London for the first time. "The English drive on the right-hand side of the car and on the left-hand side of the road, the opposite of the way we do in the U.
S.," Rutishauser said. "For someone from the U.
S., driving in London means reversing many of the rules they have learned, and making that mental shift requires abstraction to focus on driving-sidedness, and making inferences to avoid pulling directly into oncoming traffic." In the study, investigators worked with 17 hospitalized patients who had electrodes surgically implanted in their brains as part of a procedure to diagnose epilepsy.
In total, the researche.