Fault tolerance in the brain

• Published in: Nature (London) Vol. 532; no. 7600; pp. 449 - 450
• Main Author: Yu, Byron M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 28.04.2016; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/378; 692/698/1688/64; Brain; Brain research; Fault tolerance; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Neural circuitry; Neurons; news-and-views; Rodents; Science; Studies; United States
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/nature17886

If stored information is erased from neural circuits in one brain hemisphere in mice, the lost data can be recovered from the other. This finding highlights a safeguarding mechanism at work in the brain. See Article p.459 A semantic atlas of the cerebral cortex It is thought that the meanings of words and language are represented in a semantic system distributed across much of the cerebral cortex. However, little is known about the detailed functional and anatomical organization of this network. Alex Huth, Jack Gallant and colleagues set out to map the functional representations of semantic meaning in the human brain using voxel-based modelling of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings made while subjects listened to natural narrative speech. They find that each semantic concept is represented in multiple semantic areas, and each semantic area represents multiple semantic concepts. The recovered semantic maps are largely consistent across subjects, however, providing the basis for a semantic atlas that can be used for future studies of language processing. An interactive version of the atlas can be explored at http://gallantlab.org/huth2016 .