Volitional Control of Individual Neurons in the Human Brain | bioRxiv

Can the human brain, a complex interconnected structure of over 80 billion neurons learn to control itself at the most elemental scale – a single neuron. We directly linked the firing rate of a single (direct) neuron to the position of a box on a screen, which participants tried to control. Remarkably, all subjects upregulated the firing rate of the direct neuron in memory structures of their brain. Learning was accompanied by improved performance over trials, simultaneous decorrelation of the direct neuron to local neurons, and direct neuron to beta frequency oscillation phase-locking. Such previously unexplored neuroprosthetic skill learning within memory related brain structures, and associated beta frequency phase-locking implicates the ventral striatum. Our demonstration that humans can volitionally control neuronal activity in mnemonic structures, may provide new ways of probing the function and plasticity of human memory without exogenous stimulation. ### Competing Interest Statement Dr. Milos R. Popovic is a Director and Co-Founder of the company MyndTec Inc., that has no involvement in this study. Dr. Taufik A. Valiante is an investor in the company Neurescence, that has no involvement in this study. Dr. Taufik A. Valiante provides consulting to the company Panaxium, that has no involvement in this study.

Volitional Control of Individual Neurons in the Human Brain | bioRxiv Skip to main content New Results Volitional Control of Individual Neurons in the Human Brain View ORCID Profile Kramay Patel , View ORCID Profile Chaim N. Katz , View ORCID Profile Suneil K. Kalia , View ORCID Profile Milos R. Popovic , View ORCID Profile Taufik A. Valiante doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.05.079038 Kramay Patel 1 Krembil Research Institute, Toronto Western Hospital (TWH) , Ontario, M5T 1M8, Canada 2 Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto , Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G9,

related reading

• Volitional control of individual neurons in the human brainpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? | PLOS Computational Biologyjournals.plos.org
• A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviournature.com
• The control and training of single motor units in isometric tasks are constrained by a common synaptic input signal | bioRxivbiorxiv.org
• Shared mechanisms underlie the control of working memory and attentionnature.com
• So how does learning work?cs.mcgill.ca
• Engram neurons: Encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and forgetting of memorynature.com
• The Electrostatic Brain: How a Web of Neurons Generates the World-Simulation that is Youqri.org
• Burst-dependent synaptic plasticity can coordinate learning in hierarchical circuits | bioRxivbiorxiv.org
• Precise coupling of the thalamic head-direction system to hippocampal ripplesnature.com
• Neural correlations, decisions and actions - PMCncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Spatially embedded recurrent neural networks reveal widespread links between structural and functional neuroscience findingsnature.com