Learning makes brain cells work together, not apart

When you get better at a skill—recognizing a familiar face in a crowd, spotting a typo at a glance, or anticipating the next move in a game—sensory neurons in your brain become more coordinated, sharing information rather than acting more independently. That's the conclusion of a study by researchers at the University of Rochester and its Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, published in Science, that challenges a long-held assumption in neuroscience that learning improves efficiency by minimizing repetition across neural signals.