Brain circuit keeps tabs on what just happened to aid judgment of what’s happening now

Neuroscientists at MIT have discovered a brain circuit that helps animals decide whether to stick with a current judgment or update it based on new information. As MIT News reports, the circuit links a decision-making region of the prefrontal cortex with a part of the thalamus that tracks how much sensory data has changed since the previous moment. By studying mice, researchers found that the brain does not evaluate every event from scratch, but instead uses this pathway to compare the present to the immediate past. The team suggests these findings could eventually help researchers understand autism, where individuals may struggle to filter out recurring sensory stimuli.

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