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Updated: Jun 28, 2026
17:13
Exploring Deep Space - Uncovering the Anatomy of Periventricular Structures to Reveal the Lateral Ventricles of the Human Brain
Published on: October 22, 2017
Low-dimensional and optimised representations of high-level information in the expert brain
Andrea I Costantino1,2, Artem Platonov3, Felipe Fontana Vieira3,4
1Department of Brain and Cognition, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. andreaivan.costantino@kuleuven.be.
Nature Communications
|June 26, 2026
Summary
Expertise transforms the brain by shifting representations from visual details to relational information. This creates more compact, organized neural codes in frontoparietal networks for faster, expert decision-making.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Expertise Research
Background:
- Expertise acquisition relies on domain-specific knowledge.
- Neural mechanisms underlying expertise remain incompletely understood.
- Key questions involve representational content, structure, and brain localization.
Purpose of the Study:
- To elucidate the neural principles of expertise transformation.
- To understand how the brain encodes expert knowledge.
- To identify the brain regions supporting expert cognition.
Main Methods:
- Utilized chess as a model system for expertise.
- Employed neuroimaging techniques.
- Applied multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA).
Main Results:
- Expertise shifts neural representations from visual features to relational information.
- Representations become more compact and organized (low-dimensional).
- Neural processing shifts towards domain-general frontoparietal networks.
Conclusions:
- The expert brain optimizes knowledge representation for efficiency.
- Richer knowledge is encoded in fewer, better-organized neural patterns.
- This facilitates rapid and flexible expert decision-making.
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