Electrical engineering postdoctoral student Mark Churchland, left, and associate professor of electrical engineering Krishna Shenoy.
Neurons in your brain trigger the physical movements of your body, but some of them seem to fire in a crazy quilt pattern just before and during the movement. But Stanford researchers say there is method in the apparent madness. BY LOUIS BERGERON You've decided to kick a soccer ball. But before your muscles even twitch, your brain has to kick into gear to direct the action. Just what happens inside your brain during that kick-in process, though, has puzzled researchers because some of your neurons - which generate the electrical signals to trigger your muscles - sometimes work to create the opposite motion. Now Stanford researchers have found out why, and it turns out the contrarian neurons aren't contrary at all - they just have a different way of getting to their goal. "A classic idea is that the neurons are coded according to a sort of blueprint, in which each neuron has a movement that it 'prefers,'" said Mark Churchland, a postdoctoral researcher in electrical engineering.
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