Have You Ever Tracked a Thought as it Moved Through The Brain?

But it highlighted more than just how ideas pass through our grey matter.

Transcript

00:00When we use our brains, neurons fire carrying electrical signals to different parts of our body.

00:09And while we loosely know how different parts of our brains are responsible for dealing with

00:13different functions and thought processes, for the first time ever, scientists from the

00:17University of California, Berkeley say they've been able to track a thought as it travels through

00:21the brain. But how? They used what's called electrocorticography, or ECOG, a method that

00:26records individual neuron electrical activity on epilepsy patients during surgery. While hundreds

00:31of electrodes were attached to their brains, the participants were asked to listen or look at

00:35stimuli and in turn respond or make an action. And researchers found they could track the perception

00:40of audio cues as they entered areas known to be associated with processing sounds through the

00:44brain and into the prefrontal cortex, an action devising area of the brain, and further into the

00:50motor cortex, where eventually the participants performed whatever action they were prompted to

00:54perform. And while most of this was expected, the experiment highlighted more than just giving

00:58a real-time view of thoughts moving through a human brain. It also revealed just how important

01:02the prefrontal cortex is in most of our thought processes. With Robert Knight, UC Berkeley neuroscientist,

01:07calling the prefrontal cortex the, quote, glue of cognition.