How the Brain Learns Different Melodies

(University of Bern, June 06, 2013)

Different melodies often have common passages, but we have no trouble in differentiating among them. Scientists at the University of Bern explain using a new mathematical model how such overlapping sequences can be learned by the brain’s nerve cells and retrieved without confusion. Our brain can store and play back sequences of neural activity patterns in milliseconds. Through thousands of repetitions, connections between the motor neurons are “burned” at their synapses or contact points, which then trigger the desired movement. Hence Hebb’s rule: "neurons that fire together, wire together". In the case of two sequences with pauses, foreground and background neurons behave differently. The team’s model, described in Neuroscience, extends the Hebbian learning rule making it applicable to interrupted sequences.