Collaborative Research: Higher-Order Information Storage through Spatially-Ordered Synaptogenesis

合作研究：通过空间有序突触发生进行高阶信息存储

• 批准号: 9410933
• 负责人: Bartlett Mel
• 金额: $ 18.2万
• 依托单位: University of Southern California
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1995
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1995-02-01 至 1998-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9410933&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Higher; Order; Information

9410933 Mel This collaborative project between a young theorist and two experienced experimentalist to test a new theory of what happens in the brain during learning.. The theory says that learning in the mammalian cortex is guided by a balance between two distinct mechanisms. One is the continual activity-independent changes in the connections between neurons (called synapses) that tend to randomize the place on a neuron where an incoming afferent neuron establishes its connection. The second is an activity-dependent process in which the connections of afferent neurons that are active at the same time are stabilized if they happen by chance to be close together. This means that groups of frequently co- activated inputs to the brain come together to form neighboring synapses and, therefore, have a more powerful effect on their target neurons. This theory will be tested experimentally by looking anatomically at the spatial arrangement of afferent synapses on target neurons when the afferent neurons are artificially induced to have correlated activity. The theory will also be tested by simulating this type of biological experiment on a computer. The outcome of these studies promises to have a significant impact on the way we think about how the brain does the computations that allow us to learn complicated patterns.

[9410933]梅尔：这是一位年轻的理论家和两位经验丰富的实验家的合作项目，目的是测试一种关于学习过程中大脑活动的新理论。该理论认为，哺乳动物大脑皮层的学习是由两种不同机制之间的平衡所引导的。一种是神经元之间的连接（称为突触）中持续的活动无关的变化，这种变化倾向于随机化神经元上输入神经元建立连接的位置。第二种是一个活动依赖的过程，在这个过程中，同时活跃的传入神经元的连接如果碰巧靠近在一起就会稳定下来。这意味着，一组频繁的共同激活的大脑输入聚集在一起，形成相邻的突触，因此，对它们的目标神经元有更强大的影响。当传入神经元被人工诱导具有相关活动时，通过解剖观察目标神经元上传入突触的空间排列，将对这一理论进行实验验证。该理论还将通过在计算机上模拟这类生物实验来验证。这些研究的结果有望对我们思考大脑如何进行计算的方式产生重大影响，这些计算使我们能够学习复杂的模式。