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(Photo by fizkes on Shutterstock)<\/p>\n
In a nutshell<\/p>\n
ASHBURN, Va. \u2014<\/strong> You\u2019re relaxing on a park bench, zoning out on a walk, or aimlessly wandering through a new mall. You\u2019re not trying to learn anything. But according to research from the Janelia Research Campus, your brain might be busy learning anyway.<\/p>\n A team of neuroscientists has discovered something that adds a new layer to the way we learn<\/a>. By recording from tens of thousands of neurons simultaneously in mice, they found that the brain can develop remarkably sophisticated pattern recognition abilities through exposure alone \u2014 without any rewards, feedback, or conscious effort.<\/p>\n \u201cEven when you are zoning out or just walking around or you don\u2019t think you are doing anything special or hard, your brain is probably still working hard to help you memorize where you are, organizing the world around you, so that when you\u2019re not zoning out anymore \u2014 when you actually need to do something and pay attention<\/a> \u2014 you\u2019re ready to do your best,\u201d said Janelia Group Leader Marius Pachitariu in a statement.<\/p>\n How Scientists Tested Brain Learning Without Rewards<\/p>\n Led by postdoctoral researcher Lin Zhong, the team designed an experiment to separate different types of learning. Mice were placed in a virtual reality setup and allowed to run through corridors decorated with various naturalistic textures, like leafy or circular patterns. One group received rewards (water) when they correctly responded to certain patterns. Another group experienced the same visuals but received no rewards at all.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very surprised,\u201d Zhong said. \u201cI have been doing behavioral experiments since my PhD, and I never expected that without training mice to do a task, you will find the same neuroplasticity.\u201d<\/p>\n To probe this plasticity<\/a> (the changes in neural activity that underlie learning) the researchers used a specialized imaging system that recorded the activity of up to 90,000 neurons at once. They also used a visualization tool called Rastermap to analyze neural patterns on a massive scale.<\/p>\n Even if you\u2019re just walking around aimlessly, your brain is still learning about the world around you. (Image by Getty Images in collaboration with Unsplash+)<\/p>\n Mice Without Rewards Learned Just as Well<\/p>\n The team found that both groups of mice \u2014 those trained with rewards and those just passively exposed to the visuals \u2014 developed nearly identical changes in their visual brain regions. Most of the plasticity appeared in areas responsible for higher-level visual processing, especially in what scientists call the medial higher visual areas (HVAs).<\/p>\n This unsupervised exposure primed the mice to learn faster<\/a> later. When given a new pattern recognition task, mice that had passively explored the environment picked it up significantly quicker than mice seeing the patterns for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means that you don\u2019t always need a teacher to teach you: You can still learn about your environment unconsciously, and this kind of learning can prepare you for the future,\u201d Zhong said.<\/p>\n What Your Brain Is Doing While You\u2019re Not Paying Attention<\/p>\n While the study was done in mice, the results offer tantalizing implications for human learning. The brain seems to build internal models of the world just through exposure, potentially helping us learn new tasks more efficiently when the time comes.<\/p>\n The research revealed that different parts of the brain specialize in different kinds of learning. Unstructured, exploration-based learning seems to activate one set of regions, while goal-directed, task-based learning triggers another. In task-trained mice, a distinct signal appeared in the anterior brain areas that specifically tracked expected rewards, a feature not seen in the passive exposure group.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a door to studying these unsupervised learning algorithms in the brain,\u201d said Pachitariu. \u201cAnd if that\u2019s the main way by which the brain learns,<\/a> as opposed to a more instructed, goal-directed way, then we need to study that part as well\u201d.<\/p>\n Beyond Vision: A New Understanding of Learning<\/p>\n Although the experiment focused on visual processing, the implications go far beyond sight. This dual-track model, where unsupervised learning builds foundational representations and supervised learning adds meaning, may underlie how we acquire music<\/a>, language<\/a>, social cues, or even abstract reasoning skills.<\/p>\n The findings, published in Nature<\/a>, also point toward more biologically inspired approaches to artificial intelligence. Most machine learning systems rely on massive datasets with labeled inputs. But if animal brains can do so much with exposure alone, future AI might learn more efficiently by mimicking this unsupervised strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s entirely possible that a lot of the plasticity happens just basically with the animal\u2019s own exploration of the environment,\u201d Pachitariu said.<\/p>\n In the end, the study paints a compelling picture of a brain<\/a> that\u2019s always working behind the scenes\u2014even when you\u2019re not. Every glance, every moment of visual input, might be shaping how you understand the world. So the next time you think you\u2019re zoning out, remember: your brain may be getting smarter anyway.<\/p>\n Paper Summary<\/p>\n Methodology<\/p>\n Using two-photon mesoscopy, researchers recorded from 20,000 to 90,000 neurons in the visual cortices of 19 mice. Mice were split into three cohorts: reward-trained, passively exposed, and a control group shown only simple patterns. Visual corridors featured naturalistic textures to engage higher-order perception, and all activity was tracked during running states to maintain consistency.<\/p>\n Results<\/p>\n Rewarded and unrewarded mice both showed strong neural plasticity in medial HVAs, with similar selectivity for trained patterns. Pre-exposure to visual environments significantly accelerated learning of later tasks. Only reward-trained mice developed a \u201creward prediction\u201d signal in anterior brain regions. Neural changes were specific to complex naturalistic textures and did not occur with simple grating patterns.<\/p>\n Limitations<\/p>\n The study was conducted exclusively in mice, so while mechanisms are likely to be conserved, direct extrapolation to humans requires further work. The learning tested was primarily visual and relatively simple, so broader cognitive processes remain to be explored.<\/p>\n Funding and Disclosures<\/p>\n The research was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Janelia Research Campus. All animal experiments were conducted under institutional ethical guidelines. No competing interests were declared.<\/p>\n Publication Details<\/p>\n Zhong, L., Baptista, S., Gattoni, R., Arnold, J., Flickinger, D., Stringer, C., & Pachitariu, M. (2025).\u00a0\u201cUnsupervised pretraining in biological neural networks,\u201d was published in Nature in 2025. DOI:\u00a010.1038\/s41586-<\/a>025<\/a>-09180-y<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Photo by fizkes on Shutterstock) In a nutshell New research in mice shows the brain learns complex patterns…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[18457,18458,3068,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-19682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-bored","9":"tag-boredom","10":"tag-learning","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114756641485760092","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Standing-out-in-a-crowd-1200x776.jpg\"\/)
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