New Theory of Synapse Formation in the Brain

[jjhunter]

Forschungszentrum Jülich press release: New Theory of Synapse Formation in the Brain

Jülich, 10 October 2013 – The human brain keeps changing throughout a person’s lifetime. New connections are continually created while synapses that are no longer in use degenerate. To date, little is known about the mechanisms behind these processes. Jülich neuroinformatician Dr. Markus Butz has now been able to ascribe the formation of new neural networks in the visual cortex to a simple homeostatic rule that is also the basis of many other self-regulating processes in nature. With this explanation, he and his colleague Dr. Arjen van Ooyen from Amsterdam also provide a new theory on the plasticity of the brain – and a novel approach to understanding learning processes and treating brain injuries and diseases.

Associated PLOS Computational Biology article is freely available online: Markus Butz + Arjen van Ooyen's A Simple Rule for Dendritic Spine and Axonal Bouton Formation Can Account for Cortical Reorganization after Focal Retinal Lesions.

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Admins, can we have a 'Neuro' tag of some kind? (Neuroscience / Neurobiology / etc.)

Comments

[kaberett]

Oh awesome, this has clunked neatly into my mental model of how depression and counselling work.

[jjhunter]

:o)

As I put in on tumblr, where I first saw it signal boosted,

OH MY GOD.

…I realize this may not seem like a big deal to people without any background in molecular neurobio, but OH MY GOD. *flails* I can tell it’s a landmark paper, and it just came out last week, and goodness, those do not show up very often even in this field. Excuse me while I go download a copy of the PLOS Computational Biology paper (available free here!) for reading during my lunch break today.

"It was previously assumed that structural plasticity also follows the principle of Hebbian plasticity. The findings suggest that structural plasticity is governed by the homeostatic principle instead, which was not taken into consideration before" OH MY GOD.

[havocthecat]

Thanks for the links! I can't wait to dig into them when I have more time. I've always thought that the brain was a little more plastic than I had learned in school, but it's nice to see science starting to confirm that for me.

[cesy]

Tag done, and thank you for posting - this is way beyond my bio knowledge, but sounds good.