Sophisticated synapse imaging used in NIH-funded project tracks changes within neurons as learning unfolds, offering new insights for brain-like AI systems.
Sophisticated synapse imaging used in NIH-funded project tracks changes within neurons as learning unfolds, offering new insights for brain-like AI systems.
How do we learn something new? How do tasks at a new job, lyrics to the latest hit song or directions to a friend’s house become encoded in our brains?
The broad answer is that our brains undergo adaptations to accommodate new information. In order to follow a new behavior or retain newly introduced information, the brain’s circuity undergoes change.
Such modifications are orchestrated across trillions of synapses — the connections between individual nerve cells, called neurons — where brain communication takes place. In an intricately coordinated process, new information causes certain synapses to get stronger with new data while others grow weaker. Neuroscientists who have closely studied these alterations, known as “synaptic plasticity,” have identified numerous molecular processes causing such plasticity. Yet an understanding of the “rules” selecting which synapses undergo this process remained unknown, a mystery that ultimately dictates how learned information is captured in the brain.
Read more at University of California - San Diego
Photo Credit: hainguyenrp via Pixabay
