# Brain activity during tasks spans traditional area boundaries

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/brain-activity-during-tasks-spans-traditional-area/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Terry Sejnowski](https://realalpha.app/people/terry-sejnowski/) · Terry Sejnowski is a professor of computational neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
- Host: [Andrew Huberman](https://realalpha.app/people/andrew-huberman/) · Host, Huberman Lab
- Show: Huberman Lab
- Episode: [How to Improve at Learning Using Neuroscience & AI | Dr. Terry Sejnowski](https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/), Nov 18, 2024
- Moment: 27:35 to 30:10 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/brain-activity-during-tasks-spans-traditional-area/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/?t=1655

## Quote

> “there's **more input coming from the motor system** than from the eye.”
> — [Terry Sejnowski](https://realalpha.app/people/terry-sejnowski/) at [28:05](https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/?t=1685) · Huberman Lab

## Takeaways

1. Optical recordings can track tens of thousands of neurons across areas.
2. The visual system receives substantial input from the motor system.
3. Complex behavior may emerge from interactions across brain regions.

## About this segment

Terry Sejnowski describes recordings across many brain regions that reveal broad interactions during tasks. In mice, the visual system receives more input from the motor system than from the eyes.

From “How to Improve at Learning Using Neuroscience & AI | Dr. Terry Sejnowski”, Nov 18, 2024. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[27:40](https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/?t=1660) facing is we have a new way to record from neurons optically. We can record from tens of thousands, from dozens of areas simultaneously. And what we're discovering is that if you want to do any task, you're engaging not just the area that you might think, you know, Amen. the input coming into the visual system, but the visual system is getting input from the motor system, right? In fact, you know, there's more input coming from the motor system than from the eye.

[28:12](https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/?t=1692) Really? Yes. Yeah, Ann Churchill at UCLA has shown that in the mouse. This is, so now we're looking at global interactions between all these areas. And that's where real complex cognitive behaviors emerge is from those interactions. And now we have the tools for the first time to actually be able to see them in real time. And we're doing that now first on mice and monkeys, but we now can do this in humans.

[28:43](https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/?t=1723) So I've been collaborating with a group at Mass General Hospital to record from people with epilepsy, and they have to have an operation for people who are drug resistant, And to be able to take out, find out where it starts in the cortex, you know, and where it is initiated, where the seizure starts, and then to go in, you have to go in and record simultaneously from a lot of parts of the cortex for weeks until you find out where it is, and then you go in and you try to take it out.

[29:14](https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/?t=1754) And often that helps. Very, very invasive. But for two weeks, we have access to all those neurons in that cortex. that are being recorded from constantly. And so I started out because I was interested in sleep and I wanted to understand what happens in the cortex of a human during sleep. But then we realized that you can also figure people who have these debilitating problems with seizures, they're there for two weeks and they have nothing to do.

[29:47](https://realalpha.app/v/etbfLTHD_VU/?t=1787) So they just love the fact that scientists are interested in helping them and, you know, teaching them things and finding out where in the cortex things are happening when they learn something. This is a goldmine. It's unbelievable. And I've learned things from humans that I could have never gotten from any other species.