Uncovering the switch that controls brain state
It might be complicated, but the concept is as simple as a light switch. A team of researchers led by two Harvard alumni have uncovered a switch-like mechanism in the brains of larval zebrafish that flips their brains between two distinct motivational states — one a highly focused hunting state and the other an easily distracted, exploratory state. The findings, which they detail in the journal Nature, can begin to shed light on how the brain switches between internal states and coordinates this brain-wide shift, leading to dramatic changes in motivation, focus, and behavior for specific time periods. “As soon as you have more than one objective in life [that the brain has to solve], you have a tug of war. You have a conflict,” said Drew Robson, Ph.D. ’13, one of the paper’s lead authors and a former fellow at Harvard’s Rowland Institute, where most of the research took place. “The brain...