Added an important piece to our understanding of how the brain learns, continually changing the connections between neurons.
The human brain is able to adapt continuously to welcome new information, altering the way it is … wired. Now a study that has investigated in detail how the synapses workthat is, the points of contact between nerve cells, revealed surprising information. And that is that the different compartments of the dendritis (The extensions of the neurons that transport the nervous signal) do not follow all the same learning rules, but follow distinct rules.
Medicine and Ia. The research, published on Sciencethrows new light on the understanding of the basic mechanisms of the cerebral plasticitythe brain’s ability to modify your circuits according to the experience acquired, to learn new information on the environment or to get around and repair brain damage. It could open the way to new research on diseases which, by affecting synapses, generate cognitive disabilities, as happens for some neurosviluppo disorders. And finally, the studies and design of artificial neural networks inspired by the functioning of the human brain could reorie it.
Reception antennas. The dendrites are minor fibers that are branched starting from the neuron with a tree structure and transporting the nervous impulse From the outskirts to the cell body of the neuron (soma). Most neurons have a very large number of dendrites that he uses to receive signals from other neurons. These extensions, organized in distinct segments with different properties, work as a reception site primary of impulses from other neurons, which arrive in the form of synaptic input.
How many rules, and for whom? When we learn, the new information causes some synapses to strengthen and that others weaken, due to molecular processes whose “rules” are not completely clear. How does the brain decide which synapses should be changed during learning? Are the same rules for all cells, and for individual sectors? A group of neurobiologists from the University of San Diego, California, used very advanced imaging techniques, such as two -photons imaging, to observe the activity of the individual synapses in neurons of mice engaged in learning a new motor task.
Each portion on its own. In this way they understood that the individual regions of the neurons followed different “rules” in learning activities depending on the region where the synapses were. In other words, neurons did not follow a single set of rules in the learning phase, but the various dendritic sectors followed different models of neural activity Based on their position.
New levels of understanding. “Our research provides a clearer understanding of how synapses are modified during learning, with potentially important implications for health, since many cerebral pathologies involve some form of synaptic dysfunction,” explains William J. Wright, the first author of the study.
Also, knowing that neurons are able to use More different rules at the same timeand to take advantage of this, helps to respond to a dilemma of neuroscience: how to make synapses, which have access only to local information, to help to shape new new behaviors involving the entire brain.
For the future. Finally, research suggests New possible ways of designing neural networksthe central elements of the algorithms of Deep Learning artificial intelligence. So far a whole neural network had to follow a common whole of plasticity rules, but now we know that individual units can follow different rules.
