Learning and Memory
An article out of MIT (and due to be published in Nature) describes a discovery by Dr. Wilson that rats, after running a maze for 30 seconds subsequently replay their brain activity backwards at a significantly faster rate. The article talks about how this mechanism may play a role in reinforcing learning and lead to explanations of how rats and maybe humans learn from experience. While there could be many different reasons behind this type of instant replay, one has to wonder what exactly it is that the rat is learning? I’ll have to read the article to get the details.