Dr. Michael Kilgard

So I mentioned male on to long, recorded from those neurons, and sure enough, when an animal's doing this task, those neurons fire.

So the question was, if I flipped it around and said, let me put an electrode in those neurons, now there is no task.

I'm going to activate just those neurons.

While a tone happens, can I also quadruple the number of neurons that respond to that tone?

And it doesn't mean anything to the animal at all.

Like I know it doesn't mean anything because there is no reward.

The animal is not hungry.

Nothing is happening.

So that was the work I did with Mike Merzenach.

And the answer is it worked, which was just incredible.

The brain, the proportion of neurons that respond to your finger or to a particular smell or to a particular orientation of light, all those can be changed.

based on the relative timing of the release of neurotransmitters, including acetylcholine, and the activity in your brain, which is a very rich data source, lots of information about sights and sounds and smells.

It has to happen a lot of times.

How many?

Hundreds of times per day for many, many days.

That's what happened to me when I was squashing those flies.

Every day I'd go in and look at the same pattern and I'd close my eyes and I'd see it.

It didn't happen once.

It required that spaced repetition we know from psychology and neuroscience.

It's required to change the brain.