Anyone who has looked at the jagged（锯齿状的） recording¹ of the electrical activity of a single neuron in the brain must have wondered how any useful information could be extracted from such a frazzled（疲惫的） signal. But over the past 30 years, researchers have discovered that clear information can be obtained by decoding² the activity of large populations of neurons.

 

Now, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, who were decoding brain activity while monkeys reached around an obstacle to touch a target, have come up with two remarkable³ results.

 

Their first result was one they had designed their experiment to achieve: they demonstrated that multiple parameters⁴ can be embedded⁵ in the firing rate of a single neuron and that certain types of parameters are encoded only if they are needed to solve the task at hand.

 

Their second result, however, was a complete surprise. They discovered that the population vectors could reveal different planning strategies, allowing the scientists, in effect, to read the monkeys' minds.

 

By chance, the two monkeys chosen for the study had completely different cognitive⁶ styles. One, the scientists said, was a hyperactive type, who kept jumping the gun, and the other was a smooth operator, who waited for the entire setup to be revealed before planning his next move. The difference is clearly visible in their decoded⁷ brain activity.

 

The study was published in the July 19th advance online edition of the journal Science.

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