Yasemin Saplakoglu writes:

Every experience we have changes our brain, the way a ceramicist reshapes a slab of clay. Every corner we turn, every conversation we have, every shudder we feel causes cascading effects: Chemicals are released, electricity surges, the connections between brain cells tighten, and our mental models update.

The brain is “incredibly plastic, and it stays that way throughout the lifespan of a human,” said Christine Grienberger, a neuroscientist at Brandeis University. This plasticity, the quality of being easily reshaped, makes the brain really good at learning — a quintessential process that allows us to remember the plotline of a novel, navigate a new city, pick up a new language, and avoid touching a hot stove. But neuroscientists are still uncovering fundamental rules that describe how neuroplasticity reshapes brain connections.

Recently, neuroscientists described a new form of neuroplasticity that might be helping the brain learn across a timescale of several seconds — long enough to capture the behavioral process of learning from a single experience. In two recent reviews, published in The Journal of Neuroscience and Nature Neuroscience, they describe “behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity,” or BTSP. This type of learning in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory hub, is caused by an electrical change that affects multiple neurons at once and unfolds across several seconds. Researchers suspect that it may help the brain learn in a single attempt.

“It’s pretty clear that [BTSP is] a strong, powerful mechanism that can lead to immediate memory formation,” said Daniel Dombeck, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who was not involved with the theory’s development. “It’s something that has been missing in the field for a long time.”

By uncovering BTSP, neuroscientists have unraveled more of the story of how the brain changes with experience, bringing us closer to understanding how learning happens. “Neuroplasticity is … one of the last frontiers of the brain,” said Attila Losonczy, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who studies BTSP. “If we understand this, I think we take a major step towards understanding how the brain works.” [Continue reading…]