Spine Plasticity in the Motor Cortex
103 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Summary of recent advances Dendritic spines are the postsynaptic sites of the majority of excitatory synapses in the mammalian central nervous system. The morphology and dynamics of dendritic spines change throughout the lifespan of animals, in response to novel experiences and neuropathologies. New spines form rapidly as animals learn new tasks or experience novel sensory stimulations. This is followed by a selective elimination of previously existing spines, leading to significant synaptic remodeling. In the brain damaged by injuries or neurological diseases, spines in surviving cortical regions turn over substantially, potentially forming new synaptic connections to adopt the function lost in the damaged region. These findings suggest that spine plasticity plays important roles in formation and maintenance of a functional neural circuitry.
Subfields: Cell Biology, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Cell Biology
In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
In Developmental Neuroscience
Citations in the corpus
- Structural Synaptic Plasticity Has High Memory Capacity and Can Explain Graded Amnesia, Catastrophic Forgetting, and the Spacing Effect (2014, background): “Recent experiments suggest a temporary novelty-driven (thick arrows) increase of connectivity during adulthood [23,68,116].”