Synaptic Plasticity Quotes

You could double the number of synaptic connections in a very simple neurocircuit as a result of experience and learning. The reason for that was that long-term memory alters the expression of genes in nerve cells, which is the cause of the growth of new synaptic connections.

"You were designed to be very smart, Max," she told me. "We electrically stimulated your synaptic nerve endings while your brain was developing." "And yet I still can't program my DVD player," I said.

Long-term memory involves enduring changes that result from the growth of new synaptic connections.

In adult centers the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, immutable. Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated.

As the brain matures, one thing that happens is the pruning of the synapses. Synaptic pruning does not occur willy-nilly; it depends largely on how any one brain pathway is used.

I think that we are already making steps toward mapping out the brain so we can identify the chemical patterns that create and store memory.

All evidence indicates that the neuron does not reset. The synapses do not reset. They are always different. They're changing every millisecond. Your brain today is very, very different from what it was when you were 10 years old, and yet you may have profound memories from when you were 10.

In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses. You have about 1,000-trillion synapses - 10 to the 15, it's a very big number.

In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses.

Most theoretical work since the proposals of Hebb (1949) and Hayek (1952) has relied upon particular forms of dependent synaptic rules in which either pre- or postsynaptic change is contingent upon closely occurring events in both neurons taking part in the synapse.

Nerve cells communicate with one another at specialized points called synapses. And these synapses are plastic - they can be modified by learning.

Hebb place the Law of Effect at the synaptic level by proposing a correlation model of synaptic modification similar to that of Hayek (1952). This work was seminal in providing a basis for many subsequent theoretical studies . .

The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.

I've been around a long time, and I've been interested in memory for a long time. And one of my earlier interests in molecular biology of memory led me to define the switch that converts short term to long term memory.

Mimicking the intricacies of the human brain, a neuro-inspired computer would work in a fashion similar to the way neurons and synapses communicate. It could potentially learn or develop memory.

Hayek made a quite fruitful suggestion, made contemporaneously by the psychologist Donald Hebb, that whatever kind of encounter the sensory system has with the world, a corresponding event between a particular cell in the brain and some other cell carrying the information from the outside word must result in reinforcement of the connection between those cells. These day, this is known as a Hebbian synapse, but von Hayek quite independently came upon the idea. I think the essence of his analysis still remains with us.