Rapid spine stabilization and synaptic enhancement at the onset of behavioural learning.

ABSTRACT: Behavioural learning depends on the brain's capacity to respond to instructive experience and is often enhanced during a juvenile sensitive period. How instructive experience acts on the juvenile brain to trigger behavioural learning remains unknown. In vitro studies show that forms of synaptic strengthening thought to underlie learning are accompanied by an increase in the stability, number and size of dendritic spines, which are the major sites of excitatory synaptic transmission in the vertebrate brain. In vivo imaging studies in sensory cortical regions reveal that these structural features can be affected by disrupting sensory experience and that spine turnover increases during sensitive periods for sensory map formation. These observations support two hypotheses: first, the increased

SUBMITTER: Roberts TF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2918377 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature