Humans are able to continually learn new information and acquire skills that meet the demands of an ever-changing environment. Yet, this new learning does not necessarily occur at the expense of old memories. The specialised biological mechanisms that permit continual learning in humans and other mammals are not fully understood. Here I explore the possibility that neural inhibition plays an important role. I present recent findings from studies in humans that suggest inhibition regulates the stability of neural networks to gate cortical plasticity and memory retrieval. These studies use non-invasive methods to obtain an indirect measure of neural inhibition and corroborate comparable findings in animals. Together these studies reveal a model whereby neural inhibition protects memories from interference to permit continual learning. Neural inhibition may, therefore, play a critical role in the computations that underlie higher-order cognition and adaptive behaviour.

人类能够不断地学习新信息并获得满足不断变化的环境需求的技能。然而，这种新的学习并不一定以牺牲旧记忆为代价。允许人类和其他哺乳动物持续学习的特殊生物学机制尚不完全清楚。在这里，我探讨了神经抑制发挥重要作用的可能性。我介绍了人类研究的最新发现，这些发现表明抑制调节神经网络的稳定性，以控制皮层可塑性和记忆恢复。这些研究使用非侵入性方法来获得神经抑制的间接测量值，并证实动物的可比发现。这些研究共同揭示了一个模型，通过该模型，神经抑制可以保护记忆免受干扰，从而允许持续学习。