Experience-dependent Structural Plasticity in the Cortex

By Min Fu, Yi Zuo. 2011

310 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Synapses are the fundamental units of neuronal circuits. Synaptic plasticity can occur through changes in synaptic strength, as well as through the addition/removal of synapses. Two-photon microscopy, in combination with fluorescence labeling, offers a powerful tool to peek into the living brain and follow structural reorganization at individual synapses. Time-lapse imaging depicts a dynamic picture, in which experience-dependent plasticity of synaptic structures varies between different cortical regions and layers, as well as between neuronal subtypes. Recent studies have demonstrated that the formation and elimination of synaptic structures happens rapidly in a subpopulation of cortical neurons during various sensorimotor learning experiences, and that stabilized synaptic structures are associated with long-lasting memories for the task. Thus, circuit plasticity, mediated by structural remodeling, provides an underlying mechanism for learning and memory.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Structural Synaptic Plasticity Has High Memory Capacity and Can Explain Graded Amnesia, Catastrophic Forgetting, and the Spacing Effect (2014, background): “Still, on a smaller time scale of days or months [20,21,23], ongoing structural plasticity, involving the three mechanisms simultaneously, could control the anatomical connectivity to be approximately constant (see Eq.”
NISPA: Neuro-Inspired Stability-Plasticity Adaptation for Continual Learning in Sparse Networks (2022, background): “While the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood yet, recent studies have shown that synapse rewiring occurs rapidly during learning (Fu & Zuo, 2011; Kasai et al., 2010; Deger et al., 2012).”
Selection of cortical dynamics for motor behaviour by the basal ganglia (2015, background): “How does this reconciles with the evidence of cortico-cortical plasticity (Buonomano and Merzenich 1998; Barth 2002; Fu and Zuo 2011) that might lead to learn the categories needed to select movements/tasks?”
Spike-Timing Dependence of Structural Plasticity Explains Cooperative Synapse Formation in the Neocortex (2012, background): “The structure of neocortical networks of neurons changes in time: new synapses are formed, maturate, and eventually are pruned again, in the adult as well as in the developing animal [1,2], for recent reviews see [3,4,5].”