Neuroscientists at Princeton University in the United States have unveiled a groundbreaking study in the prestigious journal Nature, shedding light on the fundamental mechanism that enables the human brain to maintain its superiority over artificial intelligence (AI). According to the study, the brain swiftly crafts new behavioral patterns by repeatedly leveraging the same cognitive "modules" and creatively recombining them, akin to assembling "building blocks".

The research involved training rhesus monkeys to perform classification tasks. It revealed that the prefrontal cortex harbors reusable neural activity patterns, each corresponding to distinct "cognitive building blocks". The brain constructs novel behaviors by adeptly piecing together these "blocks". Moreover, the prefrontal cortex plays a pivotal role in suppressing irrelevant cognitive modules, allowing the brain to concentrate on the task at hand.

In stark contrast, current AI systems frequently grapple with the issue of "catastrophic interference", wherein acquiring new knowledge tends to erase previously stored memories. By integrating the human brain's modular and reconfigurable mechanisms into AI, we may pave the way for the creation of intelligent systems capable of continuous learning without the risk of forgetting.

Furthermore, this discovery carries significant clinical implications for comprehending certain mental disorders and brain injuries.