Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Scientists Watch a Memory Form in a Living Brain

Stephen Downes

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The image in this article shows a Zebrafish brain in the process of forming a memory. "In the fish that learned, the synapses were pruned from some areas of the pallium — producing an effect "like cutting a bonsai tree," Fraser said — and replanted in others." In other, less important, memories, synapses aren't actually cut and created, but merely have their strength modified. This article is a summary of a study on "a paradigm for mapping changes in the distributions of synapses in the brains of living larval zebrafish over time using longitudinal imaging." The interesting finding is that "the total number of pallial synapses in all fish did not change significantly." Each synapse created replaced one that was cut.

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Last Updated: Nov 21, 2024 4:11 p.m.

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