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Brain's flexible hub network helps humans adapt
by Gerry Everding for WUST News
St. Louis, MO (SPX) Aug 14, 2013


One thing that sets humans apart from other animals is our ability to intelligently and rapidly adapt to a wide variety of new challenges - using skills learned in much different contexts to inform and guide the handling of any new task at hand.

Now, research from Washington University in St. Louis offers new and compelling evidence that a well-connected core brain network based in the lateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior parietal cortex - parts of the brain most changed evolutionarily since our common ancestor with chimpanzees - contains "flexible hubs" that coordinate the brain's responses to novel cognitive challenges.


"Flexible hubs are brain regions that coordinate activity throughout the brain to implement tasks - like a large Internet traffic router," suggests Michael Cole, PhD., a postdoctoral research associate in psychology at Washington University and lead author of the study published July 29 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

"Like an Internet router, flexible hubs shift which networks they communicate with based on instructions for the task at hand and can do so even for tasks never performed before," he adds.


Binding these processing areas together is a web of about a dozen major networks, each serving as the brain's means for implementing distinct task functions - i.e. auditory, visual, tactile, memory, attention and motor processes.

It was already known that fronto-parietal brain regions form a network that is most active during novel or non-routine tasks, but it was unknown how this network's activity might help implement tasks.

This study proposes and provides strong evidence for a "flexible hub" theory of brain function in which the fronto-parietal network is composed of flexible hubs that help to organize and coordinate processing among the other specialized networks.




These unique patterns of connection - like the distinct strand patterns of a spider web - appear to be the brain's mechanism for the coding and transfer of specific processing skills, the study suggests.

By tracking where and when these unique connection patterns occur in the brain, researchers were able to document flexible hubs' role in shifting previously learned and practiced problem-solving skills and protocols to novel task performance. Known as compositional coding, the process allows skills learned in one context to be re-packaged and re-used in other applications, thus shortening the learning curve for novel tasks.




By improving our understanding of cognitive processes behind the brain's handling of novel situations, the flexible hub theory may one day help us improve the way we respond to the challenges of everyday life, such as when learning to use new technology, Cole suggests.





Related Links
Washington University in St. Louis
All About Human Beings and How We Got To Be Here


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