Researchers at UC San Diego have shown that stimulating specific groups of neurons can produce learned movements, News-Medical reports. The study, covered by the outlet on Wednesday, describes what the report calls a form of mind control achieved through targeted neuron stimulation.
News-Medical's coverage links to related findings, including a Nature paper titled "Targeted stimulation of motor cortex ensembles drives learned movements." Medical Xpress, also cited in the summary, reported that neurobiologists were able to trigger learned movements by activating just 20 brain cells.
Taken together, the reports point to the motor cortex as the region under study, where small clusters of neurons — often described as ensembles — appear able to drive a movement once they are activated. The work sits within a broader research effort to understand how the brain encodes and executes movement at the level of individual cells.
The summary provided does not include details on the species studied, the specific movements involved, or the methods used to stimulate the neurons. It also does not state when the full study was published or in which journal it appeared, beyond the linked Nature item.
What to watch next: whether the full study is released with methodological details, and whether other labs can reproduce the finding that activating a small number of cells is enough to produce a learned movement.
