Higher-order Information Storage and Spatially-Ordered Synaptogenesis

9424286 Desmond这是一位年轻的理论家和两位经验丰富的实验者合作的项目，目的是测试学习过程中大脑发生的新理论。该理论认为，哺乳动物大脑皮质的学习是由两种不同机制之间的平衡指导的。一种是神经元之间连接的持续活动无关的变化(称为突触)，这种变化往往会使传入神经元建立连接的神经元位置随机化。第二个是活动依赖的过程，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的话是稳定的。这意味着，一组频繁协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。当人工诱导传入神经元具有相关活动时，将通过解剖学观察传入突触在目标神经元上的空间排列，以实验验证这一理论。这一理论还将通过在计算机上模拟这种类型的生物实验来检验。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。

9424286 Desmond 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.